thing I’m bitter about, but then I’ve got no right to be bitter about anything. Have I?’
In the courtroom, Tom had seen Danny smile at his social worker, and thought, Don’t smile. Don’t laugh, don’t look pleased or excited, don’t fidget, don’t scratch your bum, don’t pick your nose, or wriggle, or do any of the things kids do all the time. Not now, not ever. ‘If that’s what you feel…’
‘Yeah, well, okay, I feel bitter. I think they should just come right out with it, you know? “I sentence you to be raped. By some big ugly bastard who’s built like a brick shithouse, uses his arm as a pincushion, and isn’t wearing a condom.”’
‘You don’t mean, you’re –’
‘Oh no. Got lucky there. I’m just naturally slim.’
Danny crossed his legs at the ankle, a conscious display that made Tom want to smile. Wasted on me, son, he thought. Though he could see it wouldn’t be wasted on everybody.
Rape was too intimate a revelation for the first ten minutes of a meeting. Either Danny had no sense of normal social distance and pacing (and where would Danny have acquired that?) or he too had a sense of falling through a trapdoor in the present, into the closeness of their first meeting. Tom kept using words like ‘intimacy’ and ‘closeness’ to describe the atmosphere of that meeting, but there’d also been massive antagonism. As there was now. And yet Danny had trusted him then, he thought, looking into the adult Danny’s amused and trustless eyes. ‘Anyway, the relationship broke up?’ he said.
‘Yes. And then I was told I couldn’t teach.’
‘Why not?’
‘Not allowed to work with children. Actually, not allowed to work with people.’
Tom said gently, ‘But you can see the point, can’t you? I mean if you were a parent and you found out your child’s teacher had been convicted of murder, how would you feel?’
‘I hope I’d think it was a long time ago.’
‘Would you?’
A silent struggle. ‘No, probably not. But it threw me, you see, because I’m just starting the third year –[ did three years of an Open University degree, inside, when I was in prison, and you can transfer the credits – and I thought teaching was what I’m going to do, and now I don’t know what I’m going to do. And, you know, the whole thing pisses me off, because last year, I was released in November and I couldn’t get a job, so I decided I’d be a gardener, only there wasn’t any work so I thought I’d be a tree surgeon. I was turning up at old people’s houses with a chainsaw, asking them if there was anything they wanted lopping off. Nobody worried about that.’
‘Did you tell – Mike, was it? The probation officer?
– about the chainsaw?’
‘No.’
‘Might be why he wasn’t worried.’
Danny smiled. ‘The point is, he had no need to be.’
‘But they have to be ultra-careful, don’t they? And so do you. One silly little incident, and you’re back inside.’
‘No, it’s not that. You see the real question is: can people change?’ Danny was leaning forward, meeting Tom’s gaze with an almost uncomfortable intensity. ‘And all sorts of people whose jobs actually depend on a belief that people can change, social workers, probation officers, clinical psychologists’ – he smiled – ‘psychiatrists, don’t really believe it at all.’
‘Well, yes – because those are precisely the jobs that furnish people with a good deal of evidence that it doesn’t happen.’
‘Do you believe it?’
Tom leant back, massaging the skin of his forehead, his face partially screened from Danny’s gaze. ‘It would be very easy for me to say yes, but I suspect in the sense you mean, I… don’t. Obviously, if you take a particular individual and change his environment, completely, for a long time, he’s going to learn new tricks. He’s got to, the old tricks don’t work any more, and he’s an organism that’s programmed to survive. If he’s capable of
In the courtroom, Tom had seen Danny smile at his social worker, and thought, Don’t smile. Don’t laugh, don’t look pleased or excited, don’t fidget, don’t scratch your bum, don’t pick your nose, or wriggle, or do any of the things kids do all the time. Not now, not ever. ‘If that’s what you feel…’
‘Yeah, well, okay, I feel bitter. I think they should just come right out with it, you know? “I sentence you to be raped. By some big ugly bastard who’s built like a brick shithouse, uses his arm as a pincushion, and isn’t wearing a condom.”’
‘You don’t mean, you’re –’
‘Oh no. Got lucky there. I’m just naturally slim.’
Danny crossed his legs at the ankle, a conscious display that made Tom want to smile. Wasted on me, son, he thought. Though he could see it wouldn’t be wasted on everybody.
Rape was too intimate a revelation for the first ten minutes of a meeting. Either Danny had no sense of normal social distance and pacing (and where would Danny have acquired that?) or he too had a sense of falling through a trapdoor in the present, into the closeness of their first meeting. Tom kept using words like ‘intimacy’ and ‘closeness’ to describe the atmosphere of that meeting, but there’d also been massive antagonism. As there was now. And yet Danny had trusted him then, he thought, looking into the adult Danny’s amused and trustless eyes. ‘Anyway, the relationship broke up?’ he said.
‘Yes. And then I was told I couldn’t teach.’
‘Why not?’
‘Not allowed to work with children. Actually, not allowed to work with people.’
Tom said gently, ‘But you can see the point, can’t you? I mean if you were a parent and you found out your child’s teacher had been convicted of murder, how would you feel?’
‘I hope I’d think it was a long time ago.’
‘Would you?’
A silent struggle. ‘No, probably not. But it threw me, you see, because I’m just starting the third year –[ did three years of an Open University degree, inside, when I was in prison, and you can transfer the credits – and I thought teaching was what I’m going to do, and now I don’t know what I’m going to do. And, you know, the whole thing pisses me off, because last year, I was released in November and I couldn’t get a job, so I decided I’d be a gardener, only there wasn’t any work so I thought I’d be a tree surgeon. I was turning up at old people’s houses with a chainsaw, asking them if there was anything they wanted lopping off. Nobody worried about that.’
‘Did you tell – Mike, was it? The probation officer?
– about the chainsaw?’
‘No.’
‘Might be why he wasn’t worried.’
Danny smiled. ‘The point is, he had no need to be.’
‘But they have to be ultra-careful, don’t they? And so do you. One silly little incident, and you’re back inside.’
‘No, it’s not that. You see the real question is: can people change?’ Danny was leaning forward, meeting Tom’s gaze with an almost uncomfortable intensity. ‘And all sorts of people whose jobs actually depend on a belief that people can change, social workers, probation officers, clinical psychologists’ – he smiled – ‘psychiatrists, don’t really believe it at all.’
‘Well, yes – because those are precisely the jobs that furnish people with a good deal of evidence that it doesn’t happen.’
‘Do you believe it?’
Tom leant back, massaging the skin of his forehead, his face partially screened from Danny’s gaze. ‘It would be very easy for me to say yes, but I suspect in the sense you mean, I… don’t. Obviously, if you take a particular individual and change his environment, completely, for a long time, he’s going to learn new tricks. He’s got to, the old tricks don’t work any more, and he’s an organism that’s programmed to survive. If he’s capable of
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