The Sleeping and the Dead

Jonathan had never minded the late nights, the loud music, strange kids in the house. At first Hannah had been surprised by his tolerance. Then she’d been jealous of his ability to get on with Rosie’s friends.

‘We’ve all been young,’ he’d say. ‘Even you, Hannah.’

He’d take them to the pub at the end of the street, buying them drinks even before they were eighteen, talking music, reminiscing about bands he’d seen and festivals he’d attended. That side of his life had been new to Hannah. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to admit to a vaguely hippy past until the sixties became fashionable again. Perhaps he’d made it all up to impress the stunning sixth-form women who sat around the beaten copper tables in the Grey Horse, downing their pints of Stella as if they were glasses of lemonade. Perhaps, stirred by their admiration, that was when he recognized there were other possibilities in his life and he turned his attention to the lycra-clad Eve.

Not Eve the temptress, he had said earnestly when he explained that he was leaving. She was shy. She hadn’t wanted it to happen. She’d be the last person ever to want to break up a family. They’d both fought it.

When Hannah failed to respond he had gone on more petulantly, ‘At least we waited until Rosie finished her A levels before making it public.’ As if that had deserved a prize. As if it hadn’t been more about embarrassment, because Jonathan and Eve both taught in Rosie’s school. As deputy head, Jonathan was Eve’s boss.

Before leaving the gatehouse Hannah clipped the keys on to her belt and tucked them into the leather pouch which was designed to keep them hidden from view. The pouch was hardly an attractive garment but she always wore it. It was a rule and she’d never had any problems with rules. Perhaps that was why she’d settled without too much difficulty into the routine of the prison. There was a comforting hierarchy: governors of different grades, prisoners with different privileges, a system and a structure. Rosie’s life seemed to have no order and that was why Hannah was alarmed for her. She had personal knowledge of how unsettling disorder could be.

The prison was category C, medium security, taking men who had been dispersed from local jails and lifers nearing the end of their sentences. It had once been an RAF base. There was still an enormous hangar which housed the workshops. The lads slept in billets where once conscripts spat on boots and folded blankets. Hannah had slipped into the way of calling them lads, though some of them were older than her. That showed, she thought, that she had become institutionalized into prison life.

The library was in a hut of its own, attached at the back by a brick corridor to the education department. The site of the prison was vast. Now, at the beginning of July, it was a pleasant if sticky walk from the gate. There were flowers everywhere. Huge circular beds had been planted in formation as in a municipal park. The grass was closely cropped. The prison regularly won prizes for its gardens. In the winter it was a different matter. Then she came to work dressed for an expedition to the Arctic. The wind blew straight from Scandinavia. Horizontal rain and sleet seemed to last for days. Men who’d grown up in cities further south spoke of their sentence as if they’d been sent to a Siberian work camp. They called it the Gulag. The nearest railway was twenty miles away.

Hannah’s orderly, Marty, was waiting outside for her, leaning against the door where the week before she had stuck a poster saying: NO SHORTS PLEASE. Since the beginning of the heatwave the men had started to dress as if for the beach. The exposed flesh and muscular thighs had seemed inappropriate for a library and, with the Governor’s authority, she’d put a stop to it. As Hannah approached she realized the phone was ringing inside. Marty must have heard it, but he hadn’t called or waved to hurry her along. By the time she’d unlocked the door it had stopped. Automatically she wondered if it had been her daughter. Anxiety about Rosie stayed with her constantly, eating away at her. She knew it was a silly habit, like checking the gas was switched off before leaving the house and always being early, but she couldn’t help it. Knowing the history of the habit didn’t help at all.

‘You can’t be on her back all the time,’ Jonathan would say. ‘Relax. What’s wrong with you? Hormones, I suppose.’ And if Rosie was there too they would snigger together. After all, what was more amusing than a middle-aged, menopausal woman scared to death that her reckless daughter would get into trouble? Because Rosie was reckless in an overreachingly confident way that left Hannah breathless.