But that wasn’t how it worked out. Eddie had an easy way with him – it must have been how he’d got his nickname, and the screws laughed at his jokes and didn’t seem to pick on him like they did with the other prisoners. Almost immediately this started to bring benefits for David because Eddie seemed to be able to get hold of anything he put his mind to. Soft toilet tissue, fresh fruit, magazines, and even on one memorable occasion two cans of beer appeared like magic in the cell. The screws turned a blind eye, and Eddie shared everything he got with David. ‘Because that’s what cellmates do,’ he said.
‘You’ve got to take care of yourself. That’s the secret,’ Eddie announced on that memorable afternoon when they’d sat on David’s bunk and raised their cans of Special Brew in a toast to the poster of Elizabeth Taylor in a sultry, low-cut dress that Eddie had put up on the opposite wall.
‘Liz has to, you know,’ he went on musingly. ‘Imagine the time she spends every evening with her paint bottles and stuff getting ready to go out to one of them Hollywood parties. Monty Clift’s outside, walking up and down getting all sweaty and impatient, but, oh no, she’s got to get it right. Eyebrows, makeup, lipstick. Not a fucking hair out of place. And you know why, Davy? You know why?’
It was a rhetorical question and David sat sipping his beer, halfway to heaven with the taste of it, waiting for the answer.
‘Because she cares about herself. That’s why.’
‘Not that easy in here though, is it?’ said David, sounding a note of realism. It was a long way from HM Prison Oxford to Beverly Hills, California.
‘No, it ain’t,’ said Eddie, agreeing. ‘But I’ll tell you this much – looking after yourself when you’re inside is where it’s most important. Because in here is where they’re trying to take your pride away every minute of the day. I should know – I’ve been in prison enough times. The point is, Davy, it doesn’t matter where you are – Hollywood or Her Majesty’s pleasure. You’ve got to keep your head up. That’s what I do. And it’s what you’ll do if you’ve got any sense. Why do you think I’m working out down in the gym during association? Why do I try and eat proper food?’ said Eddie, jabbing his finger over at the two rows of apples and pears carefully arranged on the rickety shelves under Elizabeth Taylor’s poster.
‘I’ve noticed you spending a lot of time looking in the mirror, Eddie. I suppose that’s the same thing,’ said David, trying to inject a lighter note into the conversation. He didn’t really disagree with Eddie’s take on how to survive prison life but it was instinctive for him to rebel a little whenever he found himself being lectured about anything. And Eddie was indeed almost obsessive about his personal appearance. He spent ages every morning stooped in front of the broken piece of glass screwed to the wall at the back of the cell, combing his jet-black hair until the parting was razor straight, and he insisted on the barber who came round to shave the prisoners every morning taking extra care with the long sideburns that he’d grown in the style of Elvis Presley. David had learnt very early in their relationship that the two great loves of Eddie’s life were America and show business.
David regretted his words as soon as they were out of his mouth. Sipping his beer, he felt more warmly disposed to Eddie than ever before at that moment and he had no wish to rock the boat or give him offence. But he needn’t have worried. Eddie had a very thick skin.
‘Yes, taking care of what you look like’s important too. Of course it is, like I said before,’ said Eddie, refusing to be put out of his stride. ‘It’s like my old auntie used to say when I was a kid – take care of your skin if you want to feel comfortable in it.’
David had begun to notice in recent days how Eddie’s aunt, like Elizabeth Taylor, was becoming an increasingly frequent visitor to their conversations.
But it wasn’t all Eddie. He knew how to listen too, and perhaps it was this quality more than any other that drew David to his new cellmate. David had two years of anger and frustration built up inside him, and it helped to let some of it out. Or rather he thought it helped. Talking about Katya and Ethan had seemed like a relief to begin with. He’d not been able to talk to anyone about how he felt until now. People didn’t discuss personal stuff in prison. It was one of the unwritten rules. But Eddie was different. He wanted to know about what had happened, every last detail of it.
Lying on their bunks after lights-out, they had long, whispered conversation into the small hours. Their positions, one on top of each other, so close and yet invisible to each other, disembodied voices in the semi-darkness, made it easier to talk somehow. And so David had told Eddie his story, or his version of it at least – about how Katya had thrown him over and how that made him feel, about Ethan, and about Katya’s coming to court and reading out his letters one after the other, looking over at him in the dock with such hatred in her eyes.
And Eddie was sympathetic, so sympathetic in fact that his words of comfort made the pain worse, not better, turning David’s slow-burning anger into rage so that he couldn’t sleep at night for the thought of Katya and what she had done to him.
Sometimes, waking up in the pale light of day, David did draw breath and wonder why Eddie seemed to care so much, but then Eddie himself provided the explanation. David’s experience with Katya fitted in with Eddie’s whole view of the opposite sex. It was another proof for his well-developed theory that women were the root of all evil. He made an exception for his dead aunt and a screen goddess or two, but the rest of them were all the same. They teased men with their tight skirts and their painted faces, promising paradise with a look of the eye or a turn of the hip, and then, once they had their victims hooked, they turned them loose just to watch their pain.
‘For the fun of it, just for the fucking fun of it,’ said Eddie, whose first experience of evil women had been his tart of a mother who had abandoned him at his grandmother’s so she could carry on with the life of debauchery that her pregnancy had briefly interrupted. And then the grandmother had not been much better, beating Eddie with her stick whenever he came home late from school and dosing him with horrible homemade medications to keep his insides clean. Only his great aunt, his grandmother’s younger sister, had shown him a little kindness, but that was only when the old woman’s back was turned, and it hadn’t been enough to stop him running away at the first opportunity. He’d gone to his mother but she wouldn’t have him. And from there he’d begun a series of relationships that all ended in disaster, culminating in marriage to a cook in one of the colleges, who’d turned him in to the police when she found out he was using the basement of the matrimonial home as a warehouse for fencing stolen goods.
‘Fucking bitch. The only thing I miss about her is her apple pie,’ said Eddie, who then promptly turned and spat out the unwanted memory into a corner of the exercise yard. The night was over, giving way to a cold, miserable morning with the sun lost behind a thick blanket of grey clouds, and the prisoners of A Wing had been turfed out into the open after an unappetizing breakfast of overcooked porridge and dried toast. David shivered, wishing he’d brought his coat from the cell.
‘Visit; visit for Earle!’
One of the screws was shouting down at them from the top of the staircase leading up to the new building over beyond B Wing, the one housing the rec room and the gym.
‘Aren’t you the lucky one? That’s your second in a week,’ said David, unable to keep the envy out of his voice. He couldn’t remember when he’d last had a visit. His mother was too ashamed to come and his friends all seemed to have forgotten him. Out of sight; out of mind.
‘It’s business, Davy. I told you that before,’ said Eddie, clapping David on the shoulder as he turned to go. ‘Just because I’m banged up in here doesn’t mean I ain’t got things going on on the outside; things I need to hear about from
