It hadn't taken Barbara too long to get the measure of Larkhall as it now was.
As the first few days crawled their way at an interminably slow pace, the dormant patterns in her mind intruded themselves from unlock first thing in the morning to the slamming shut of her cell door at night. Part of her rebelled into accepting her lot but realism told her that bashing her head, time and time again, against her fate was as useful as a goldfish trying to head butt his way through the glass shell of a goldfish bowl. That gentle voice of the other side of her that uneasily coexisted inside her, the Christian stoic, began to be heard. The more she accepted her fate, the more that her panic reaction died down inside her and her claustrophobia diminished, day by day. She had no choice but to accept her lot in life and she started to sleep like a log through the night to make up for that frantic drive within her to see her through the barred windows somehow, anyhow. In fact, she started to wake up, feeling bleary eyed in her own way to make up for lost sleep.
Her visitors, first Jo, then George and Yvonne provided that comfort blanket that she had not been utterly deserted and dissolved away that nightmarish feeling of being abandoned. She dare not move beyond the fear that her cosy nest where she had been happy was frozen in time, from when she had last seen it before the police took her away in a white car and sirens blaring as if she were a desperate criminal. In its place, Larkhall imposed its dreary uniformity on her. After all, she had been here before when the prison regime was much nastier, more casually unjust, where the screws were someone to avoid and, at best tolerate.
Out of sheer habit, she kept looking out of the corner of her eye to see if that sinister black shape and that hated voice would jump into her consciousness. He had been the personification of all that had repelled her about Larkhall, him and Shell Dockley. She had to convince herself that he had really gone. After all, she had only been at Lauren's trial for his murder. As for Shell Dockley, she had been spirited out of Larkhall never to return. Larkhall wasn't so bad, it was well just prison.
The only real problem she had was Bodybag. They had never got on from the start. It might have been that thanks to the stupid woman's incompetence, she had received a slating from Karen due to her mix up with Tessa Spall but, as Nikki confided to her later on, her problem was in being who she was. Anyone who was clearly middle class and intelligent roused Bodybag's sense of inferiority so that it came out in that malignant manner of hers. Nikki being a lesbian and able to run rings round her was only the icing on the cake, so to speak. But Nikki was G wing's wing governor now. Barbara smiled fondly at the idea. She wondered if one minor reason for Nikki's choice of profession was out of mischievous humour. She wouldn't put it past her.
"OK, Hunt, stop dawdling. I haven't got all day," Came that hated voice.
"The name's Mills now, if you please," Came her frosty reply.
"Hunt you were, and Hunt you will always be. A leopard never changes its spots. Might have known you would end up here"
"You really ought to get my name right, Mrs. Hollamby. You should know that accidents can happen"
Barbara's voice on the outside seemed superficially in her normal mild tone of voice but inwardly, she was raging and a slight tremor in her voice showed her feelings. She had hit a nerve in Bodybag as she hadn't forgotten that blazing tone and those angry blue eyes, which had raged at her. Her memory was retentive in one direction only, in recalling all the slights to her authority and being hauled over the coals by authority figures. Most of all, Bodybag remembered the handsome father figure of a vicar who would have warmed her autumn years. No one knew the depression of spirit of being widowed and lonely and the way that Hunt woman had not only ended up with one husband but three. It was disgusting.
"I'm making no mistake about you. You should never have been allowed to get your claws into poor Henry. He didn't know what he was letting himself in for but he was naïve. Vicars are other worldly and don't know how life really is"
Barbara could not bear to hear any more from that abominable woman and turned away to stalk off in the other direction. She didn't want to end up striking her and end up down the block in her first week. Fortunately, fate in the kindly form of Colin Hedges came to her aid.
"I'd get in the queue for the canteen or the tea and breakfast will get cold," He suggested the ideal getaway clause to Barbara. "Nothing like it, a nice cup of tea to set you up right for the day"
A very slight smile at the corner of his lips betrayed his real reason for strolling over. Bodybag tut tutted in exasperated anger and stomped off to the prison reception to hopefully hector and bully the new prisoners in their induction, all in the name of good order and discipline.
Barbara automatically placed her hands either side of the regulation blue tray and trudged her way forward to where the Julies were smiling kindly at her.
To their practiced eyes, even though they were dishing up the bangers and fried eggs to one prisoner after another, one glance from either of them took in the expression on Babs's face. She hadn't got those shadows under her eyes and her skin had a bit of colour in it, not that dreadful grey colour and her skin sort of sweaty. She was a bit more, like, upright and awake.
"We've got eggs, sunny side up, just the way you like it," Julie Johnson greeted her.
Barbara was just about ready to make the necessary compromises of her stomach with prison food though it was tough going. Barbara smiled slightly though she looked warily at the rather overblown looking sausages.
"You need to get a decent breakfast down you or you'll fade away to a shadow," Julie Saunders followed up the message in her motherly way. How could Barbara resist though? Her blue plastic mug filled with hot tea was more promising.
"Talk to you later, love," Julie Johnson added with a winning smile, which made Barbara reproach herself. How could she be removed and distant from their warm hearted and sunny natures?
Barbara found herself sitting opposite Kris Yates whose manner reminded her of someone who she couldn't place. In turn, Kris glanced at Barbara and decided she was harmless. To the woman's suspicious and wary nature, that word was a real compliment.
"Mind if I sit here"
"No skin off my nose," Came the reply from Kris, as she shrugged her shoulders in total indifference. "You're new here?" she added after a chill silence was punctuated by them eating and drinking. It was more an expectation of agreement than a question.
"As a matter of fact, I'm not"
Kris raised her eyebrows in surprise. To her way of thinking, the mild mannered well-spoken woman looked more at home at a church fete than locked behind bars.
"By the way, my name is Barbara Mills though I was known as Barbara Hunt and still am known by that by Bodybag, that stupid woman who thank God has gone elsewhere"
"Kris Yates." An outstretched hand and something of a welcoming smile greeted Barbara at the acid tone in Barbara's voice. "So how did you land back here"
"The vicar here, Reverend Mills, I mean my husband unhappily died of lung cancer." There you are, the words were out. Lame and inadequate though they were, she had said them for the first time in normal conversation.
"So what's that got to do with you?" Kris asked incredulously in her terse, sceptical fashion.
"They think that because I assisted my second husband when he was in total agony to end his life quicker than the cancer was killing him, I did the same this time"
"They must be joking," Kris exclaimed in her own rough and ready sympathy. There was the thought she was searching for. Sharing a cell with Nikki had shown her that behind Nikki's occasional hard edge, was a woman with a large heart. This woman was just a younger, less polished version of her, more guarded
"I would never risk coming back to prison, not even for poor Henry's sake. If I'm convicted, I might never get out of prison this time."
Kris didn't know how to respond to the tremor in Barbara's voice but unknown to her, the look of sympathy on her face was answer enough. All Barbara's hard won skills in orienting herself fast to new situations were being rapidly dusted down now she was back in Larkhall. In turn, Kris could never tell this woman a load of shit, like everything would come out all right in the end, as she mistrusted life in all its forms.
Presently, she found a way out of the brooding silence between the two of them as she started to thread two and two together. She could have sworn she'd seen Yvonne pass across her line of vision in a flash of movement.
"Did you know Yvonne Atkins seeing as you were here before"
"Oh yes, we were great friends and we still are. She was here the other day to visit me as a matter of fact"
A broad smile spread across Kris's face. Yvonne had told her a few stories about the old days. This woman was all right.
Bodybag was daydreaming about her retirement cottage by the sea while keeping half an eye on the job. Chance would be a fine thing with Wade and Betts on her back all the time. You're best off where you are, Jim, she sighed. At least you are in the great prison officer retirement home in the sky and you can be in the company of all who have gone before us. You can catch up with all the gossip, drink as much as you want and never have to worry about do gooder types and all the cons who've abused and slandered you all down the years. If only………
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself"
"Yeah, you ought"
"Now then, now then. What's this all about?" blustered Bodybag in her unnecessarily rhetorical fashion as two voices burst into her scrambled consciousness.
Barbara had readily poured her heart out to the Julies. They were so good, so reassuring and they had been around when she and Henry's paths had become intertwined by slow stages. They were hopeless romantics and she and the vicar were made for each other. They were horrified to hear what happened to him had happened to her Peter. Some women had all the bad luck and she was dead good. She didn't deserve it and when they had heard what that evil cow was spouting about, they flew out of the cell and were down on the wing in seconds. There she was, just gawping into space. They resolved to give her a piece of their minds.
"As if you don't know. You've been horrible to Babs when she's been pining for her poor husband"
"Pining, yeah"
"A load of sentimental poppycock. She's as guilty as sin. It's in her nature, no matter how Christian she pretends she is."
The lofty tone with which Bodybag tried to crush the other two women and the heavy- duty sarcasm with which she emphasised 'Christian' only infuriated the Julies more than ever.
"You evil old witch…" stormed Julie Johnson.
"You'll be down the block if you don't watch your step"
"And who's going to do my adjudication? Provocation, that's what I would plead, mate. I'd walk it and you know it."
Julie Johnson silently nudged the other woman. They had an unspoken agreement not to put their old mate Nikki on the spot but her blood pressure was roused to boiling point and the words just came from her mouth.
"Can you imagine, your nearest and dearest just wasting away, nothing you can do about it"
"That's what happened last time, and she got three and a half million pounds"
"Babs ain't got three and a half million pounds now. That was grabbed back that she didn't give to set up that half way house. The vicar talked posh, no doubt about it but they ain't rich, not going by one I had as a punter. You could see the mothballs coming out of his trouser pockets, and all"
"You're living in cloud cuckoo land about that woman"
Julie Saunders looked sharply at Bodybag. There was a slight wobble in her voice that was new and suddenly, a flood of memories came back about the amorous Bodybag making a very blatant play for the vicar and think she wasn't noticed. A very satisfied smile spread over her face.
"You're jealous, that's what it's all about. I remember. Me and Ju have been here for simply ages and we don't forget, just like Yvonne"
The words from Julie Saunders were a real crusher. On the one hand, the name of Bodybag's worst enemy made her blood pressure rise and on the other, she felt awkward and school girlish when she remembered what she had felt for Henry.
"Why, she's blushing," They chorused as a red faced Bodybag beat a hasty retreat.
So intent were the three of them on the ding-dong row that they had not observed Nikki move quietly closer to them. A smile spread across her face as she let matters resolve themselves.
"Is there anything going on here that I need to know, Julies"
"No, everything's going just fine," They chorused together for a change.
"Good. That's what I like to hear," Retorted Nikki as she strolled nonchalantly away.