Community Service Ch. 15

Everything changed, on the day when for both prison-statistical and for her own, personal reasons Governor Meredith Monroe of Greystone Prison had fast-tracked a Visitor Pass for me to see my imprisoned dissident, staunchly anti-AFP girlfriend, Tina.

Yes, most certainly Governor Monroe wanted female prisoners Miss Tina Marshall and her cellmate and co-troublemaker, prisoner Miss Janice Middleton, off her books.

But the Governor had another, separate, ulterior motive for so suddenly and unexpectedly sending a Securi-Fem prisoner transport van to pick me up at Canford's Sock Room and having me brought to Greystone Prison.

In my pre-visit interview in her office, it was to my inexpressible astonishment and a real sense of alarm that Governor Meredith Monroe propositioned me - put a deal on the table.

To the effect, that: If through using me as her experimental guinea pig, her little heartstring-tugging, sword-of-Damocles threatening, bargaining-chip ploy worked as hoped and Tina and Janice promised to desist with their subversive activities and get out of the AFP's hair for good ... there was a reasonable life to be had, for male Authoritarian Female Party "conformists".

Governor Monroe had also told me what would happen to me, and to Tina and her best friend Janice if her Getting-them-to-see-the-light experiment didn't work, and I let her down.

And, what would happen, if it did, and I didn't.

***

Tina was an excellent swimmer - much better than me - and after almost two weeks here now I still never tired of watching and admiring her seemingly effortless and virtually splash free progress through the green-blue warm waters off the white sandy beaches of our Seychelles honeymoon island.

Tina was by now tanned to a fabulous golden perfection. And as she moved gracefully through the water the glittering droplets that flew from the sun-kissed fingertips of her backstroking sun-bronzed hands looked to me like handfuls of sun-spangled diamonds cast carelessly away to the deep dark depths by a frivol of a water goddess.

I suppose I could get a bit fanciful where Tina was concerned.

But yes, the hot sun here certainly liked Tina - but then I wasn't looking too bad on it myself!

I could still hardly get over the incredible warmth of the sea, surprised all over again each time I ventured in - these certainly weren't the bone-chilling, teeth-chattering waters of Brighton!

Tina loves it, I thought, admiring the lithe, toned perfection of her golden body making such light work of the gently rolling seas as I took another long, refreshing pull from my tall glass of amazingly tasty fresh fruit juice with crushed ice.

Enjoying the Seychelles was hot work.

*

In the Visitors Room of Greystone Prison, Governor Meredith Monroe had told Tina and Janice that, under the terms of their 'staying out of the AFP's hair' agreement they were now free to take up residency again of the flat they shared.

She had cleared with their landlord (who had been ordered by AFP authorities not to re-let the apartment in the meantime), the not inconsiderable debt in rent arrears that had accrued as a result of their unfortunate lengthy absence from the property.

And she told them also, that immediately upon officers Bella Donna and Billie Jo's report informing her of the most satisfactory outcome, with a quick phone call she had seen to it that they could return to work in their jobs as counter assistants at Burger Heaven, one of Canford High Street's fast-food outlets.

The Governor reiterated her offer to Tina and Janice that, if they so wished, they needn't return to work at all - anywhere.

Yes, they were ex-convicts, and they would always have their prison record. But the AFP were always ready to forgive the misguided peccadillos of their young female citizens ... if not prepared to forget.

Instead of working for a living, effective as of today Tina and Janice could be registered to begin receiving the AFP's very generous male-taxpayer funded Ladies of Leisure Living Allowance.

Both of them could lead lazy lives of leisure.

Free, to spend their time just as they pleased.

Taking whatever advantages they liked, of the many male-provided benefits, services, and even personal attentions - as the vast majority of the UK's female population did these days.

In no uncertain words, Tina and Janice had thrown Governor Monroe's offer right back in her face.

They told the Governor that they preferred to stick to the letter of the terms of their agreement: To cease their subversive activities; and to desist taking their anti-AFP banners and placards onto the streets and waving them about in outraged protest, so encouraging others to disorder.

They told the Governor that they would never vote for the AFP - in fact, they would always vote for the Opposition - but would from now on honour their avowed commitment to stay out of the AFP's hair.

Tina and Janice reiterated in turn to Governor Monroe their immutable and unflinching principles that, the whole concept; the whole, female-friendly ideology of the Authoritarian Female Party - and, of the AFP themselves - was totally anathema to them.

Every day, with all of their heart, they would hope for and look out for the first tell-tale signs of the AFP's downfall, and they would rejoice in the inevitable and inescapable day of all of their and their acolytes' reckonings and comeuppances.

Because surely, it could only be a matter of time before each of the heads-of-the-Hydra monstrous movement were all brought to book. Just a matter of time, before the many willing perpetrators and enforcers of their wicked wills and diabolical decrees, faced sweet justice - Governor Monroe included.

The Governor said to remember that the offer was always there.

Governor Monroe then turned to me and told me that she was very pleased that I hadn't let her down, that I'd played my role so well.

Yes, she said, I'd been nothing but a masterfully and mercilessly manipulated, reluctantly cooperating pawn.

And so not really, a willing collaborator. Not a genuine, bona fide AFP conformist, but, still ... I had served her purpose.

She said that now she knew that her brainchild solution bargaining chip, Getting-them-to-see-the-light, strategy, worked so well, she was most hopeful of reforming many other such similarly romantically attached dissident female prisoners as Tina through her new proven method's efficacious devices.

Smiling, the Governor told me she had cancelled my Securi-Fem prison van return transport to Canford's Sock Room.

She informed me that with immediate effect, as per our 'agreement' I was now relieved of my assignment in the Sock Room - I did not have to go back there.

Ms Harriet Harmman, the Community Service Liaison Officer and MP for Canford, would advise my two Sock Room supervisors CSOs Karen and Linda accordingly: Authorised at the highest level, with immediate effect Community servant David 007 is cleared to stand down from his duties in the Sock Room.

I managed a smile of my own ... CSOs Karen and Linda weren't going to be happy to lose me - their always reluctant and disinclined but ever compliant and obedient footboy.

And so my two (now former) supervisors were going to have to train and condition a new Sock Room community servant - heaven help him!

Next Monday, one week from today, I would report to the concierge's office at number 10 Downing St.

There, I would be given my new, Government Support Worker Identity credentials.

And then, dressed not in my community servant's uniform but in my new position's attire of black suit, white shirt, and black tie, taken forthwith to begin my new duties as an Under-footman.

Meanwhile, I was free to take the rest of the week off.

No small luxury.

Since for more than three months now, I had been working in the Sock Room for seven days a week - ten-hour shifts, on Saturdays and Sundays.

Governor Meredith Monroe had then handed out AFP-authorised Brighton to Canford rail warrants to Tina, Janice and me, with some attached refreshments vouchers for the buffet car.

Governor Monroe then gave each of us another free pass. This one, for the bus to Brighton, which stopped at the rail station en route to the bus station.

As it happened, she said, the next bus was due to depart in just a couple of minutes, so we'd better be "toddling off".

Governor Monroe then detailed one of her 'Jailhouse Blue' female prison officers to escort us off the premises and to take us to the bus stand, situated near the Security Checkpoint building.

The four of us walked along the walled-in connecting walkway, saying nothing. The only sound, the businesslike slap-slap-slap-slapping of uniform issue flexible foam-rubber soled flip flops, rapping smartly against the bottoms of the Blue's bare heels, her pale creamy arches, flashing with her each and every step as she led the way.

The bus to Brighton was already at the bus stand, and the maybe twelve or fifteen passengers who'd been waiting for it - some of them prison visitors, and some of them Blues coming off the early shift - were now starting to board.

I considered quickly popping into the Security Checkpoint building, to say a polite goodbye to the two Receiving Officers, Melanie and Natalie ... but then thought better of it.

Having been instructed by Governor Monroe to see us onto the bus, our escort Jailhouse Blue was still with us.

Before boarding the bus after Tina and Janice, I turned around to look at her, one last time.

She wasn't quite so drop-dead gorgeous beautiful as the lesbian lovers, prison officers Candice and Cordelia - but only, not quite.

As with officers Candice and Cordelia, though, her beauty was all on the surface.

If she'd had her way, she would have exerted her influences and pulled a few strings to facilitate a very different future for me.

An ill-fated future, as an always inherently reluctant but ever forcibly compliant provider of Foot Service and Table Service in Greystone Prison.

And a future, as prison officer Analise's 'bitch'.

"You've just had a very, very lucky escape, Community servant David," said prison officer Bella Donna.

*

On the train to Canford, Janice had cried.

When, in the time-honoured fashion, I'd got down on one knee, and proposed to Tina.

Who said 'Yes'.

***

Tina was coming out of the sea now, wading her way through the breaking foam-crested waves to the white sandy beach.

And what a sight, she made!

Looking for all the world like Ursula Andress, in the James Bond '007' movie 'Doctor No'.

Unbidden and unwanted, associated remembrances of my two former Sock Room supervisors CSOs Karen and Linda - or 'Miss' Karen and 'Miss' Linda', as I'd unfailingly had to address them respectfully - resurfaced in my memory.

CSO Karen's nickname for me had been 'Sockboy', which was bad enough.

But her colleague Linda's had been a more sarcastic, hurtful mickey-take: '007'. Taken from my ID, as it had been, back then: Community servant David 007.

CSO Linda would cruelly deride me, as ... Slipping her feet from her uniform-issue black, backless, thick rubber soled clog-like shoes and scooting out from behind her desk on her castor-wheeled swivel chair, she propped her freshly unshod feet upon 'her' shoulder of her and CSO Karen's on-his-knees forward-facing office 'footrest'.

Provokingly taunt me, as, taking turns with her similarly sat coffee-drinking colleague in burying my nose into every part of the soles of her sweat dampened yellow cotton ankle-socked feet and particularly tormenting me with the nostril-cupping undersides of her toes, recrossing her ankles, she ensured I inhaled her foot scent aromas deeply and repeatedly.

Mentally, I swatted and batted those honeymoon-spoiling memories away, before their attendant disagreeable and still disconcerting associations with the sock-changing females inevitably followed hot on their heels - I didn't want to go there.

I didn't need to, now.

All of that was behind me - it was in the past.

I supposed, though, in the still clinging grips of an albeit milder form of post-traumatic stress disorder, most probably I would be plagued with such unpleasant and disturbing flashbacks for some time to come.

I caught the attention of a beach waiter.

Smiling broadly, he ambled over with his large tray of thirst-quenching refreshments.

On the waiter's tray was an appealing selection of ice-cold fruit drinks. Free for the asking, to his five-star hotel's All-Inclusive guests.

And in this weather, he was certainly kept busy!

I asked him if I could have another two of those incredibly delicious banana-and-pineapple based thirst-quenchers, that were Tina's favourite.

"Oh, thank you!" Tina said pleasantly to the waiter. "I'm ready for that!"

Tina reached for the sun lotion bottle and handed it to me to do my pleasurable duty.

Preparing to soak up some more sun, Tina smoothed out the beach towel on her padded white beach lounger, and I enjoyed watching even that simple ordinary action of hers.

Again, Tina smiled gratefully at the beach waiter, who was now placing our drinks in the shade of our umbrellaed table. "Right now, I could use one of those - thanks!"

The waiter couldn't do enough, for Tina - none of them could. Nothing was too much trouble.

It wasn't just me, who was so besotted with her.

"Oh, not at all - please don't mention it! You are most welcome!" he said effusively.

"It is my pleasure, Mrs Smith."

*

It felt great to be wearing normal, regular clothes again.

The very first thing I'd done upon arriving home on Monday afternoon from my sudden and unexpected visit to Greystone Prison, was to bin my compulsorily worn uniform white T-shirt with its emblazoned community servant's ID.

Although I was still well and truly and in fact would more than ever now be dominated and controlled under the AFP's heel, not to have to wear the subjugating, stigmatising, sub-status denoting T-shirt anymore - whether at work in the Sock Room, or in the general public domain - felt like an incredible liberation.

My mum and dad were at work, in the florist shop in town they owned and ran: 'Roses are Red'.

So before I popped out again to catch up with Tina and Janice at their flat to do what I could to help them get settled back in again after their lengthy cell-bound sojourn, I left a note for Mum and Dad.

I outlined my great news about being relieved from my Sock Room assignment and asked Mum if she would invite my two older sisters Alison and Denise round for a celebratory dinner - and my cousin Rose, of course, who worked full-time in my parents' florist shop. Oh - and that I would have an exciting surprise announcement.

My older brother John, who worked as a chef on an oil rig in the North Sea, was away at the moment, in the middle of one of his three-week work stints on the Omega 3.

But as my new, Governor Monroe facilitated assignment was Monday to Friday with weekends off, soon now we would once again be able to go and enjoy a Saturday-night pint at our local pub, the Lord Nelson.

*

Even more disappointed than my two supervisors CSOs Karen and Linda at my being relieved of my duties in the Sock Room, of course, was the seriously chagrined and unutterably angry Mrs Norma Newlove.

Upon leaving the house at midday the following day, Tuesday, to go to Burger Heaven for a spot of lunch and to see the already back at work Tina and Janice during their lunch break, it was apparent that my across the road neighbour from hell Norma had received the 'bad news'.

I'd been hoping to avoid Norma.

But Norma must have been watching out for me leaving the house. I'd seen Norma's living room blinds twitching, and then a moment later she was standing on her doorstep, silently glaring over at me.

Whatever I thought of her, the fact could not be ignored or denied that she was a looker.

Norma Newlove, in her mid-twenties, olive-complexioned and voluptuous-figured, with her long, lustrous raven-black hair hanging straight down almost to her waist she looked as beautiful as ever.

A catch for any man ... you'd think.

Though this was a confrontation I didn't need or want, I could see from Norma's aggressive postured demeanour of expectation that nonetheless it would have to be endured and got out of the way.

Norma wasn't happy.

It was a dream come true for Norma, the day that the Community Service Liaison Officer, Ms Harriet Harmman, had assigned me to work in the Sock Room to earn my weekly Unemployment Benefits.

I could still remember Norma, on that first day when the Sock Room had opened - exultant, gloating, gleeful ... triumphant.

Norma Newlove had had me exactly where she wanted me - in the Sock Room at her feet, hand-washing her dirty white cotton sport and leisure socks every day, and often getting to cane my bared bottom with CSO Karen or Linda's AFP-issue whippy bamboo cane - and now she didn't.

For all that her and her cronies Gina Stainham and Cheryl Chubb had done to me in the Sock Room on a daily basis, most probably from being buoyed by my late good fortune at my changed circumstances and so feeling in a generously forgiving mood, somehow I found it in me to offer a conciliatory word.

For all that they'd put me through; for all, that Norma, in particular, had made me suffer at her hands - but mostly, at her feet - I went over, and I attempted one last effort at reconciliation. Or, at least, I hoped for some manner of truce between us.

"Norma ... Mrs Newlove. For ... whatever I did, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Do you think, now, Mrs Newlove, that we could be, um, friends?"

Norma glared at me for another long moment.

She then grabbed her coat from the rack in the hallway behind her and, putting it on she looked back over her shoulder and shouted loudly, "Mum! Can you mind the kids? I want to go out for an hour."

"Okay, love!" I heard Norma's mum call back, over the noise of several shrieking kids and the equally raucous racket of the cartoon characters on the blaring television in the living room.

Norma placed the palm of her hand on my chest and shoved. "Out of my way - shrimp! I'm going to the Sock Room."

Well, I thought, so much for that!

I watched Norma walk away, her body language speaking eloquently of her pent up, vengeful aggression.

Though I knew it wasn't very sensible and, that even now, severe and painful repercussions could result from giving in to my petty urge, because of the way she'd rejected my generously proffered olive branch I couldn't resist a dig back at Norma.

"Say hello to Gina and Cheryl for me!"

Norma didn't turn around or say anything, but for a moment her step seemed to falter.

"Give them my best!"

This time Norma stopped in her tracks, her back rigid in sheer rage.

"Tell them I'll miss them!"

Norma still didn't turn around or say anything, but in her barely contained fury she was repeatedly bunching her fists and splaying her fingers.

And then the moment passed, and Norma was on her way again, picking up her pace.

My sympathies, my condolences, my heartfelt commiserations, went out to Canford's newly assigned Sock Room community servant.

*

After my disappointing but not very surprising doorstep contretemps with Norma Newlove, in which we'd seemingly cemented our irreconcilable differences permanently, the pleasant thoughts and happy feelings about Monday evening's family get-together dinner that had been occupying my mind prior to our ill-fated confrontation had soon returned as I continued on my way to Burger Heaven to meet up with Tina and Janice.

To Norma Newlove's apparent disapproval and even greater displeasure, I was wearing not my customary community servant's ID'd white T-shirt and white, easy-to-pull-down elasticated waist white shorts - but white trainers, tan chinos, and a maroon pullover. And now, no one looked at me twice as I walked away from the woman of my nightmares and covered the short distance to town to see the girl of my dreams: Tina - the heaven of Burger Heaven.