Dominic viewed the closing door to the Prison Officer's room with narrowed eyes, which were full of contempt. Di Barker and Sylvia had just scuttled out of the room with grins all over their faces. To his eyes, that meant not the ordinary unselfish happiness with the world around them but malicious glee at someone else's misfortune. It didn't take rocket science to work out what caused the fight during which Karen had been hurt.
It had shocked him the very first day when he had seen Di again to tell how much she had changed for the worse since he was last at Larkhall. He could remember her as a friendly woman, slightly dippy but well meaning who hung round him a lot. The first time he saw her, she directed a very cold look at him, turned her back to him and carried on gassing away to Sylvia, her one time enemy. Her behaviour in the Lauren Atkins trial finally blackened her in his eyes. Never mind, he thought to himself philosophically, his errand was achieved and he could get back out onto the wing till his shift had ended.
He shook his head and grinned to himself as he joined Selena on the wing. She was a good sort, polite and enthusiastic, a bit like he was when he had first started. His mouth made all the right noises and his eyes took in all around him but his mind was elsewhere. It was the bombshell that Gina had dropped on him of his new wing governor being Nikki Wade of all people. One look at Gina's face persuaded him that she wasn't pulling his leg. Once her explanation sank in, he found that he could go with the flow on this one. There must be a very compelling reason why Nikki, of all people, had volunteered to go back to Larkhall and that she must have good reasons to take on the job.
His mind took him back to his early days and when she gradually assumed a very nebulous but very real position of semi official power. There were incredible bittersweet moments around that time that he would never erase from his memories even if he had wanted to. In particular, he remembered Nikki's very light footfall that broke in on his thoughts as he walked round the exercise yard on a perfect sunny spring morning. Inside his mind, there was darkness and conflict as his conscience reproached him for that very gentle kiss he had exchanged with Zandra Plackett. It seemed to him to be the first small footstep on the downward staircase to Jim Fenner's moral standards or lack of them. In any way the inexorable advance of Zandra's illness made it all the more painful to think of what he would come to lose. Either way, he wasn't going to win.
They slid into a naturally companionable conversation as they strolled along and he remembered saying that he was thinking about not carrying on as Zandra's personal officer. Of course, he had not told her in so many words about the place in his heart that Zandra had come to occupy but Nikki knew.
"What's more important though, that someone who's had nothing but shit all her life has a little bit of love at the last minute or that you have the satisfaction of knowing that you haven't broken any rules."
That level gaze, her gentle words told him that she knew everything that was going on in his mind. It pulled everything together and made total sense. Whatever he knew that was coming up ahead was made at least bearable.
"What I'm saying is, don't beat yourself up about it."
He could vividly remember that feeling of release that those words of wisdom and sympathy for him had gently tapped him in the right direction. At that moment, she was his boss and he, the novice in the combined art of dealing with human feelings and to sense out what was right and what was wrong. He awoke from his torments to realise what a lovely day it was outside and that he had somehow never noticed it. That moment of calm lasted far longer than anything a clock measured out in time. Then, in slow motion, she moved on. He stood still, facing into the sunlight and saw Nikki walking away with her arms folded round her breasts as she seemed to sail sedately onwards like some elegant old time clipper ship blown by a gentle wind, at peace with the elements. Yes, she had answered his thoughts and not his words and when he came to think about it, Nikki being wing governor was easily possible……….
In a smoky, ill-lit corner of the social club, Di and Bodybag had that furtive, conspiratorial manner about them. They occupied the smallest table, chosen to shut out any intruders so that they could whisper to each other. It was in keeping with their devious characters that they knew how to whisper that way.
"I saw Madam get a black eye from Denny Blood, one of the Governor's very own favourites," Bodybag started, a malicious smile on her face as she licked her lips after tossing out the dainty morsel as an appetiser.
"Get away," Di appeared to contradict her. "You mean the woman who can do no wrong who Miss Betts smiles at as if she were a life long friend."
"The very same. I remember ages ago how she volunteered herself to take her to Atkins's house for a day's holiday in that gangster's moll's house. Now look how her plans to reform Blood have turned out. As my mother always said, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. A leopard doesn't change her spots, not someone who graduated in how to be a hardened criminal from Shell Dockley, another psychopath that Madam was far too soft on."
"Tell me more, Sylv," Di urged, her eyes unhealthily agleam in anticipation.
"I saw Blood come out of her cell looking as if she was drugged up. There was that mad glare in her eyes and the way she stomped around. That psycho nearly bumped into me and didn't hear a single word I said to watch where she was going. She marched away to Al McKenzie when she poked her nose out of her cell."
"Next thing, she'll try to reform her as well and blame it all on us if it turns out wrong," Di said vengefully.
"Anyway, Blood started shouting all kinds of gibberish and McKenzie wasn't any better with that accent of hers. Someone like her needs everything she says sub titling before you can understand the slightest thing she's saying."
"That's a good one," Di laughed.
"Anyway, they started knocking the hell out of each other and that do gooder Dominic comes up and phoned Madam on the mobile. They were at it hammer and tongs when she arrived to see the floorshow. The rest of the cons were cheering on each side, making a dickens of a row. She wanted me to get everyone banged up but I stayed out of it. I mean why should I risk getting attacked? I'm not Action Woman even if she thinks she is."
"Quite, Sylv."
"I mean, if I was enjoying what was going on, why should I spoil the prisoner's harmless bit of fun?" Bodybag proclaimed with breathtakingly hypocritical regard for the prisoner's welfare. "Mind you, she never allowed me the chance to explain myself properly that if they wore each other out, they would quieten down. That's not her 'do gooder' style."
"She doesn't listen to good advice apart from a 'select few' of those in her inner circle."
"And we don't belong here with our age and experience."
"Aye, that's right enough."
"So she grabs hold of both of them and Denny turns round and whacks her one right in the eye. That shiner will go all the different colours of the rainbow and take a week or more to settle down. There was mayhem till Blood got hauled off to the block."
"I bet that spoilt her 'I'm so perfect looks'," Di laughed. It gave her great satisfaction to think that there came a time in everybody's life that they couldn't flaunt what nature had given them with no real merit. It was so bloody unfair the rotten deals you got out of life. Betts deserved it and had had something like that coming to her for a long time.
"I remember if a prisoner as much as raised her hand to a prison officer, never mind the Governing Governor and she was ghosted out so quick that her feet didn't touch the ground."
"I can remember it was still that way when I joined up," Di Barker reminisced dreamily. "Everything was simpler in those days."At least Denny Blood will have to cool off for a few weeks."
"Don't count on it, Di," Bodybag's gloomy tones of warning gave her a paradoxical sense of satisfaction. "I wouldn't be surprised if she isn't up on the wing in a matter of days.
"You can't be serious."
Up till then, Di had been content to trade commonplace prejudiced in that intense way that she got worked up about things. At this point, her blue eyes opened wide and an expression of shock and horror spread over her face. She had gradually come to believe that the prison service was gradually going to the dogs. The training schools were slapdash these days and the wrong sort of women were coming into the prison service. In her turn, Bodybag nursed her glass of orange and sipped from it as her dark imaginings towered like storm clouds into her sky. There was something she had heard and she eventually found it in her memory, which could be tenacious, if her own selfish self-interest was involved.
"There's something going on that Madam is plotting. She said something about Gina's replacement that she'd keep an eye on us."
"You know I was wondering how long Gina was going to act up as Wing Governor. Surely there's something in the rules that, after so many months, they have to get a replacement that's permanent. Otherwise, they could go on for ever and it only means that we are one PO down."
She had not really thought of this one in advance but it didn't do to look totally stupid, even in front of Sylvia.
"You don't suppose that Stewart is coming back. She was swanning around like the Queen of Sheba not so long ago."
"She couldn't come back. Not a third time." Di was outraged at the thought and it showed.
"The POA wouldn't allow it, mark my words. They would be up in arms at the very idea."
"You never know, Sylv. These are strange times and you can't put anything past those in charge. The Prison Service is crying out for good officers and for Wing Governors. That Josh Mitchell got to become a PO after being the handyman."
"It won't happen, Di," Sylvia said kindly. Di was really getting worked up by anything she said. "It would be against everything I know about the prison service and if Jim Fenner were here alive today, God rest his soul, he would say the same."
Di sniffled a bit into her little lace handkerchief and a half smile crept its way round her face. Sylv had been around for a long time. At the end of the day, she trusted her to tell her what was what.
"I don't think it will happen. Mark my words, it will be some young upstart with a psychology degree or something equally useless and impractical. That's the sort of high faluting woman that Karen likes. She'll have a head full of theory and no jail craft. She'll have come across her on one of her many free jaunts to Area, or at some conference. Whoever she is, she'll think of her as the bee's knees. The main thing is that she won't know the difference between the threes and the servery. We can pull all sort of flankers on her and she'll never notice a thing." Sylvia laughed gleefully. She sensed the prospect of her freedom coming as much as any con did when their time was up. The trouble with Gina was that she knew too damned much about the place for her own good and Bodybag's.
"Do you reckon, Sylv? This place isn't what it was. We've got Dominic back for one. God knows what I ever saw in him."
"You and Dominic? Well, I never. You kept it quiet," Bodybag said with heavy-handed coyness.
"It was never serious. It was only one of those fancies that you get over." Di lied twice in quick succession. Then to cover her faint embarrassment at having let something slip even to Sylvia, she hurried onwards. "Then there's that Selena and Colin Hedges, both goody goodies in her club."
"Don't worry so, Di. So long as we stick together, we'll be all right. Another drink?"
"Yeah, twist my arm.The others can wait……"
They laughed together as, after all, they deserved the occasional little perk from time to time and the others could lump it until they were ready to come back.