The Inheritance. Simon Tolkien

fence, to which had been affixed a prominent ‘No Entry’ notice. The instruction did not seem necessary. Everyone in the courtyard, prisoners and warders alike, seemed to instinctively avoid going anywhere near the death house.

      ‘I know all about it. I’ve been here a lot more times than you, you know,’ said the other woman irritably. ‘I’ve seen them putting up the notices on the prison door in the early morning, and I’ve watched the families waiting outside, which is more than you have, Ethel. Huddled up in their cars in the cold. Some days they don’t let us in when there’s been a hanging. The prisoners get restless and the screws can’t control them properly. My Johnny’s told me what happens.’

      ‘Is that when they do it then? At dawn?’ asked Ethel, who was obviously used to accepting her friend’s sharp words without complaint.

      ‘No. It’s usually seven or eight o’clock in the morning, after the poor sod’s been nicely softened up by a night in the death cell, vomiting up his last meal if he was stupid enough to eat it in the first place. And stop bloody talking about it, Ethel. People don’t do that in here. You should know that.’

      Ethel was silenced, and the two women covered the rest of the walk to the visitors’ block in silence, leaving Mary alone with her thoughts. She had known, of course, that they carried out executions here, but she had successfully managed to avoid identifying the actual place where it happened during her previous visits. She’d somehow assumed that it would be out of sight, but now she knew better. Ethel and her friend had seen to that, and Mary accepted the knowledge like an obligation.

      At the door to the visits hall she paused, blinking in the sudden bright artificial glare of the overhead lights. There were no dark corners here where contraband could be passed across, under, or around the wooden tables, which were ranged in long rows from one end of the hall to the other. And along each wall warders in blue serge uniforms stood watching, occasionally stepping forward to enforce the rules forbidding any form of physical contact between inmates and outsiders.

      Waiting in line for her pass to be checked at the front desk, Mary thought that the ceaseless unified drone of all the voices in the hall made the place seem like a vast beehive, but then she realized the comparison was far from apt. There was nothing productive happening here, and for most of the people in the room the short time together only made the subsequent separation from their loved ones even harder to bear. In the grip of a sudden claustrophobia, Mary half-wished she hadn’t come.

      Directed to a table at the far end of the hall, Mary caught sight of Stephen before he saw her. His bright blue eyes were wide open but clearly unfocused on his present surroundings. Always the dreamer, she thought as she walked towards him down the aisle.

      He had changed out of the suit he’d worn for court into the standard-issue prison uniform of blue-and-white-striped shirt and jeans, and he was now sitting in a characteristic pose: his elbows resting on the table, his head resting on his hands, and his long, tapering fingers interlaced as if in prayer, while his thumbs rhythmically caressed his Adam’s apple and the stubble on the underside of his chin. The top of his shirt was open, exposing the whiteness of his throat, and Mary suddenly stopped in her tracks, fighting to hold back images of the executioner fitting a noose around her lover’s neck, of the snap as the trapdoor opened beneath his feet, of Stephen hanging in the air, twisting and turning this way and that. All trussed up and dead. Everything around her suddenly seemed too real, too brightly lit, and she steadied herself for a moment against an empty chair.

      I shouldn’t have listened to those bloody women, she thought as she caught Stephen’s eye and drew the outline of a smile across her suddenly pale face.

      But for Stephen there was no effort. His face lit up as soon as he saw her. And the sudden glow transformed his features. The stubborn line that sometimes seemed fixed around his mouth disappeared in the radiance of his smile as he got up to pull out the chair on the other side of his table and instinctively brushed it down with a prison-issue handkerchief extracted from the pocket of his trousers.

      ‘Quite the gentleman,’ said Mary.

      ‘It’s the training,’ said Stephen. ‘English public schools, dinner parties at home, you know.’

      ‘Not exactly the ideal preparation for life inside this place,’ she said, looking around her at the lines of broken-down men in their ill-fitting prison uniforms. Stephen’s, surprisingly, fitted him quite well. He seemed to have the knack of making any clothes he wore seem like they were tailor-made.

      ‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong,’ he said, smiling. ‘My school had a lot in common with prison as a matter of fact. Lousy food, endless rules and regulations, an all-male population thinking about what they can’t have. And a whole lot of men in uniforms making sure they don’t get it.’

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Mary, laughing. ‘This is Wandsworth Prison, for God’s sake.’

      ‘True. And I’m sorry. I’m not thinking as usual. I hate you having to come here. It’s a horrible place. I wish they’d let me see you at court.’

      Instinctively Stephen stretched out his fingers and touched the top of Mary’s hand for a moment. She looked up into his eyes for the first time since her arrival and thought how strange it was that he should be so concerned for her welfare when he was the one shut up inside this God-forsaken place, on trial for his life. He’d changed since Oxford, she realized. He wasn’t a boy any more; prison had made him a man.

      ‘Kissing’s not allowed, I’m afraid,’ he said, holding her gaze. ‘Strictly against the rules.’

      Mary could understand why. She could hardly fail to have noticed the lust in many of the prisoners’ eyes when she’d walked past them. Sexual frustration hung in the air like a cloud of atmospheric pressure.

      ‘You looked good in court today,’ she said. ‘I liked the suit.’

      ‘I’m glad. Can’t say I did much. Made me feel like I was going to my own funeral.’

      They were silent for a moment, both back in the courtroom with the dwarflike prosecutor relentlessly outlining the evidence against the accused.

      ‘You mustn’t worry, you know,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘I’ll be all right. Truth will out, you’ll see. Old Murder can do his damnedest, but it’s not his decision at the end of the day.’

      ‘Old Murder?’

      ‘Oh, sorry – that’s what they call our judge in here. They say he’s the worst of the lot. But the nickname’s pretty good, don’t you think? He looked at me today like he’d got half a mind to come down off his bench and throttle me himself. God knows why. It’s not like he even knows me.’

      Stephen fell silent, as if frightened at how doubt had so quickly replaced his earlier optimism. But then his lips tightened in defiance. ‘I didn’t do it, you know,’ he said suddenly. ‘I couldn’t have killed him even if I’d wanted to. He was my father, for Christ’s sake. It’d be like murdering part of myself.’

      ‘You said you hated him,’ she said.

      ‘Yes. And I loved him too. Love and hate aren’t so far apart, you know.’

      Stephen was silent again for a moment, and there was a faraway look in his eyes when he went on: ‘There’s not a day goes by that I don’t feel guilty about leaving him alone that night. Opening the door for whoever it was to walk straight in there and put a bullet through his head.’

      ‘How were you to know?’

      ‘I wasn’t. I just wish I hadn’t left him, that’s all. No one deserves to die like that.’

      ‘What about that family in France?’ asked Mary, leaning forward across the table. ‘He herded them into a church like cattle. That’s what you told me. Did they deserve what happened to them?’

      ‘No, I know. You’re right. There are just too many ghosts. That’s the trouble. Too many unanswered questions,’ said Stephen, returning to the present