REading Room annexe

It was easy for leaves. Dried out, light as ashes, it was no trouble at all for the wind to skirl them up and buffet them over the high coils of barbed wire. Guthrie rested on his rake for a minute, watching them escape: russet, gold and brown, tumbling against blue sky. He took out his tobacco pouch. Slipping a cigarette paper from its packet, he realised it too could fly away - over the fence on a gust – if he un-pinched his fingers. He cupped a hand around the flaring match and touched his cigarette-end to the sputtering flame. The paper took on a spreading red fringe. He drew hard and blew out a plume of smoke, picking a strand of tobacco from his lip. At his feet, the pile he’d raked was being scattered. Only Arbuckle would have a man rake leaves on a day like this. Still, Guthrie never minded, so long as he was out of the block and left to get on with it. At this rate it could take him all day; and that suited him fine. 

​

From this spot near the perimeter fence he could see the drive curling between dark conifers all the way to the Carse. A car was threading its way down. Guthrie squinted, puffing smoke up past his left eye. The car stopped by a stand of Scots pine. The driver’s door opened and a tall grey-suited figure unfolded. It looked like he was peeing in among the trees, or else stretching his legs – it was too far to tell. Guthrie pinched out the cigarette ember between stained thumb and forefinger, put it in the top pocket of his overalls and returned to raking.

​

The guard opened the main gate: Guthrie saw from the corner of his eye. A glossy Hillman Sedan rolled into the grounds, autumn sun glancing along its contours, its engine breathy and subdued. Guthrie had his back to the car now but he sensed, as a creeping across his shoulders, exactly where it was, and how it looked. The movement of air caused by its passing stirred a flurry of leaves that now sailed and swung back to the ground. The car swept to the left, towards the main doors, and parked by a stand of horse chestnut. The Insurer walked smartly round to open the door for his wife. Her head bobbed above the roof as she stood up, smoothing creases from her dress. Guthrie knew this only because he was now working sideways on to the main building and could just about see the two figures in his peripheral vision; he imagined the rest. She took her husband’s arm and they made towards the building, her dark curls bouncing. After a short wait, they disappeared inside.

​

Guthrie carried on raking leaves and the wind carried on dispersing the small mounds he collected. After ten minutes or so, he heard the main door open and the Insurer and his wife emerged, followed by the Prison Governor. Talking and laughing, they were headed towards the laundry block and Refectory. Being a Friday, it would be fish, but Guthrie was too far away to catch the waft as the door opened.

​

Gales had bowled through the Carse these past three nights, tearing through the trees. Leaves shivered free of their joints, expiring in damp carpets. Jaundiced, copper-spotted, they were not yet the crisped filaments they would become as October’s jealous withering sucked them dry on the branches. The winds had diminished now to teasing gusts, occasionally building into a bluster that puffed out Guthrie’s shirt and shooed twigs along the drive. The gusts ushered out leaves and dust, without their wanting or knowing, through the diamond holes in the fence. Guthrie’s grey eyes narrowed, watched them go, randomly, without effort, without anyone noticing. The next breeze might just as easily blow them back inside. Nor would they fight it, nor would they care.

​

Guthrie looked around suddenly to see Arbuckle’s straight, black figure watching him from in front of F-block. He moved along to gather a new pile, working vigorously, his upper back muscles warming with rapid strokes of the rake. When the signal sounded for lunch, he had worked up a slight sweat. He carried his rake on his shoulder, towards the refectory. He left it against a chestnut trunk by the Sedan. 

​

In the refectory the smell of haddock hung thick in the air. He collected his tray with its compartments and felt its weight growing with each spoonful that was lumped into it along the counter. He sat with the men from the block. There were the usual shufflings and muttered curses, the same recriminations and reluctant yielding of space as every other day. Arbuckle came in and stood straight like a poplar at the end of the table, his looming presence quieting the men into mute obedience like cattle at the trough.

​

At the far end of the hall, the doors opened and the Governor entered, followed by the Insurer and his wife. Most of the men looked up then quickly away, pretending not to have noticed the gloss of the curls on her head, the flowered fabric cinched at her waist that, really, was the only colour in the room. The noise died away, save for the sober percussions of cutlery, as men focused on their mash and wilted fish, making sure not to look at the visitors. But Arbuckle was looking. Craning his neck round like a bloody owl, his hands still clamped behind his back like a parade-ground colonel. The Insurer’s Wife, blushing at finding herself among this multitude of men, gave him an uncertain look. Perhaps there was a flash of recognition in her glance, perhaps just discomfort. The Governor indicated the new heaters near the ceiling that took the chill off in winter, though you couldn’t say they actually heated the place. Guthrie could just hear them as they walked towards the servery. The Governor swept his arm over the food hatch with its new Formica counter, much more hygienic he was telling the Insurer – the old wood just harboured the germs and in a place like this with a high density of occupation, you couldn’t afford to let germs get a foothold. The Insurer and his wife nodded politely and the three walked down to the back of the hall where a plaque commemorated former Governors stretching back to inauguration. Arbuckle was following the Insurer’s wife with his eyes as if he had never seen a woman in his life. He was a proud man, down to the knife-edge creases in his regulation trousers, it was unusual to see him making such a show of himself.

​

Guthrie looked out towards the main building, with its old turrets. Just around the corner behind the monolithic stone wall, he knew the Hillman Sedan sat in the shade of horse chestnut trees. He thought of its sleek curves glancing by him in the autumn sun. Probably now a few of the rusty leaves had landed on its bonnet, like withered hands pawing the glossy paintwork.

​

The Governor was working back up the room with his guests. They were coming towards the table. Arbuckle was shifting his weight, puffing out his pectorals.

“You won’t have met Mr Niven from the Shepherds’ Friendly Society, will you, Mr Arbuckle?” The Governor said in an awkward, formal voice.

The Insurer reached forward, his other arm firmly intertwined around his wife’s elbow. Arbuckle barely managed to connect his hand with the Insurer’s for he was working his jaw towards saying something; staring, still, at the wife. “No. Very pleased to meet ye, Mr Niven. I don’t know if Mrs Niven will remember me though, eh?” He said, turning to her, nodding at her. She blushed again. “Irene, is it no?”

“That’s right.” She said, extending her gloved hand. “I…”

“Fae Inchture? You’re one of the Mackay girls are ye no?”

“I was Mackay before I married. Were you at the school?”

“Aye. I was ages wi’ your brother and Davy Sheddon – they were great pals. I served a year in Burma wi’ them.”

“Och, now I remember. Davy was a right joker, always up at the Farm.”

“Was he no’ away to Germany?”

“That’s right. Aye Malcolm came back alright – he’s an officer now, up at Lossiemouth - married wi’ two weans.”

“Ye live in the Carse yerselves, dae ye?”

​

 Guthrie, close by, stacked his tray. He’d never heard Arbuckle speak so politely before. He went out for a cigarette, sheltering from the wind in the lee of the thick wall. By the horse chestnuts, he surveyed the Insurer’s car. The beetle-green bodywork was all rounded with streamlined ridges winging out to the rear lamps. Chrome frets encased the side windows with their tiny triangular partitions. His mind returned to Arbuckle, his tight–drawn lips and small, clenched teeth. There in the refectory he was grinning like a buffoon, laughing, quite the gentleman, Mrs Niven this, Mrs Niven that, and affae pleased tae meet you, now. His shiny face with its lantern jaw was like a mask for his real character. When there were no outside observers, his mouth slackened and dog’s abuse fell from it, his top lip curled close round his teeth in a sneer; he loved the sound of his own voice giving an order. Arbuckle liked to be heard and to show off his rank. Guthrie had learned to keep his tongue in his head so he’d be left in peace: to think, to have a smoke. It gave a person more time to notice things if they weren’t bumping their gums about something. He’d never been much of a talker– he liked to hear his breath suck on a cigarette, the wind sighing at his ear, the chatter of the birds. Now Guthrie noticed the chrome winged handle of the Hillman boot. He admired its slim form, and imagined how its elegant T-bar shape must function: the cool metal stalk between curled index and middle fingers, the satisfying click as the wrist rotated through a slight clockwise angle, the light upward spring of the door as it released. All this in silence, inside his head: quiet thoughts. He stamped out his cigarette butt, his eyes now on the door of the boot – a rectangle with rounded corners, about as big as a beer crate. Inside, the capacity would be a bit bigger than the door itself; big enough, he reckoned, for luggage for two, perfect for Mr Niven taking his wife on their holidays.

​

“Pleasure talking to you, Mr and Mrs Niven.” Arbuckle leant forward to shake hands with the couple in the Refectory doorway, his eager, oily face catching reflections from the lamps.

​

The Governor edged between his visitors and the officer. “About time the men got back to their workshops, Arbuckle.” And he strolled with the couple through the door and on towards their car, looking down at his highly polished boots, sharing polite jokes on the way. He stood beside the car admiring it, exchanging comments with Mr Niven about the mechanical virtues of the Hillman versus the Austin makes. Their gentleman’s talk was punctuated by the Insurer’s key in the lock and the round click of the handle button. The men shook hands. The Governor moved swiftly to the other side of the car to open the door for Mrs Niven. Her heels made crisp clicks on the Tarmac. Mr Niven put his key in the ignition and the engine turned over, spreading soft vibrations through the car. The exhaust coughed gently against the ground and ruffled the edges of leaves speared on a rake between the chestnut trees. The governor patted the roof of the car as it moved out of the shade, swung onto the drive and slipped through the gate. The rowans by the fence shed a leaf or two like tears as the car departed. Out beyond the Scots pine, the car was buffeted as it reached the crest of the hill and turned into the main road. It would be well into the afternoon before Arbuckle discovered the rake idle by the horse chestnut and wondered who’d left it there. A tail wind nudged the car at quite a clip through the Carse. There was a clean, respectable air about the Insurer and his wife travelling in their Hillman, spirited along with the greatest of ease like leaves on a breeze, light as air.

​