Authors: Kate Kray
A
bout a week after the money arrived, Rosie had taken Annie, her agent, out for dinner. She told her that she was, at last, available to take any audition that was going. Much to Rosie’s relief, it wasn’t long before she was making the trek to and from Soho to be seen for a variety of roles – commercials, mostly, but a few more exciting parts, too.
One Thursday morning, just after she had come in from hanging the washing on the line, the phone rang. Rosie was tempted to let it ring – over the last week she had had three calls from Johnny. They had not been threatening in nature, but they had still disturbed her. He had begged her to come and visit – ‘I want you,’ he’d pleaded. ‘I
need
you, to survive.’ It was clear that he just couldn’t accept that it was over.
So it was with some trepidation that Rosie picked up the receiver.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Rosie,’ chirped the female voice enthusiastically.
‘Oh, morning Annie.’
‘Well, congratulations, my dear,’
Rosie held her breath… there was one particularly exciting job she’d been up for, and she was praying to every saint in the calendar that Annie was calling about that one.
‘A lead role in a major TV adaptation… that’s a bit more than you were expecting, eh?’
The shock sent a giant bolt through her body. ‘You mean… no… it can’t be!’
‘That’s right,’ said Annie, after an involuntary tut, ‘Eliza Dolittle,
My Fair Lady
! Do you think you could pass as a cockney flower girl who pretends to be a lady?’
‘Oh my
God
!’ Rosie squealed. She had been really nervous at the audition and didn’t think that it had gone particularly well. Let’s face it, she was no Audrey Hepburn. But Andrew Brook-Fields, the producer, had been there, and seeing an even
slightly
familiar face had helped to put her at ease. Rosie had been mortified when she had let him down before, so she had been desperate to impress him this time.
‘Eliza Dolittle’ she grinned.
‘Eliza bloody Dolittle!’
‘All I want is a room some where,’ Rosie began to sing, in her broadest cockney accent, ‘far away from the cold night air…’
‘Wouldn’t it be luv-er-ly?’ Annie sang, joining in. ‘I’ll know more about the details later. We’ll have a script by the weekend – it’s been adapted from the stage version – and I believe Andrew Brook-Fields is going to contact you personally. I passed on your number.’
‘Ain’t it bloody luverly?’ Rosie exclaimed again, before they said their goodbyes.
Rosie’s head was buzzing. She jumped onto the sofa, threw the cushions into the air, and started singing – Rosie was so happy, she couldn’t contain it. This was beyond anything she had hoped for.
She couldn’t wait to tell somebody… anybody. Her hands still shaking with excitement, she punched in Ruby’s phone number. She must be in class, thought Rosie, as the call was directed to her voicemail. Next she tried Aunt Madge – but there was no answer there either… she must be out walking Dibble.
OK… Stevie…
‘Hello?’ said the mumbling voice at the end of the line. In her excitement, Rosie had forgotten that it must be something like 4 o’clock in the morning in Florida.
‘No
way
!’ exclaimed Stevie, after Rosie told her the news. ‘Eliza Dolittle! Sweetie, I’m
so
pleased for you. Bless your heart! Oh my God.… Oh my God, Eliza
Dolittle
! I can’t wait to tell Joe.’
‘I can hear,’ came Joe’s sleepy voice, as he leaned over to share the phone’s mouthpiece with Stevie. ‘Congratulation, Rosie. That’s great news. I would be even more excited if you’d told me at breakfast.’
‘Ignore the grumpy man,’ Stevie said.
‘Sorry, Joe!’ Rosie shouted into the phone, laughing.
‘I bet Ruby-two-shoes is thrilled to mint balls!’
When Ruby finally arrived back from school – which seemed to take forever – she dropped her school bag at the foot of the stairs, unwound her scarf… and stopped dead. She hadn’t seen her mum this excited or happy, ever.
‘What?’ she asked, with a puzzled look on her little face.
‘I’ve got it, Ruby darling! I’ve got it!’
‘What, Mum? You got what?’
‘That lead role that I auditioned for. Eliza Dolittle!’
Ruby was ecstatic. Not only was she happy for Rosie, but also secretly chuffed at the prospect of living with an actual celebrity.
‘My famous mum!’ she beamed, throwing her arms out.
The script arrived early on Saturday morning by motorbike courier. Ruby excitedly signed the docket, and took the padded envelope from the rider.
‘Mum, Mum it’s here!’
Rosie made them a cup of tea, and they cuddled up on the tatty sofa. Rosie began to read.
“‘Act One”,’ she declaimed. “‘On a rainy night in Edwardian London the opera patrons were waiting under the arches of Covent Garden for Hackney cabs. Eliza Dolittle, a cockney flower girl, runs into a young man…”’
They were 20 pages in before Ruby noticed a sheet of paper that was still in the envelope.
‘Wow, Mum’ Ruby said, her eyes like saucers. ‘Have you seen this?’
Rosie picked Ruby up, dropped her into her lap, and read the cast list over her shoulder.
“‘Eliza Dolittle – Rosie Mullins.”’ Ruby clapped excitedly. “‘Henry Higgins – Thomas R Williams. Colonel Hugh Pickering – Sir Laurence James.” Mum! Simon R James! He’s
wicked
. He’s been in
everything
. And Sir Laurence James! Flippin’ heck!’
Ruby bounced about on the sofa, overwhelmed that her own mum had been cast alongside some of Britain’s finest actors.
‘Mum?’
‘What’
‘Oh my
gosh
, I am
so
proud of you.’
O
n the morning of Rosie’s last visit, Johnny had woken earlier than normal. The hands on the clock crawled towards the hour of Rosie’s arrival until, at long last, he was summoned.
The bulging veins in his neck pulsed as he strolled along the landing on Cell Block B, mumbling to himself. This short walk to the visiting hall always stirred up strong emotions. This time he had an uneasy feeling, gnawing away in the pit of his stomach, that something was wrong. And not without reason – Rosie hadn’t written in over two weeks. That had never happened before. He had to see her, look her in the eye, and find out what the hell was happening.
Like anyone who has spent time inside, his whole world revolved around his visits. After all, there was very little else for him to think about, to occupy his mind. Everything was regimented; he didn’t even have to think about where the next meal was coming from. He couldn’t go anywhere – there’s no bus or train for him to catch. So it was no surprise that the main event of the month was the precious, two-hour visit. Of course, the worst thing that a visitor can do is be late.
For the first few years Rosie had been a dutiful prison wife, making the long journey to go and visit him as regular as clockwork. But, as time passed, with Ruby being so young and having to go round to Aunt Madge’s house, she was frequently delayed. That used to wind Johnny up worse than anything.
Didn’t she understand that every second he spent with her was gold?
She used every excuse under the sun: ‘There was a lot of traffic on the road’, ‘My train was late’…
blah, blah, blah
. They only had
two
hours – two hours a
month
. Johnny didn’t want to miss a second, let alone half an hour. And what made it worse was, when she was late, it usually meant another 30 minutes of him being forced to listen to Rosie’s tearful excuses. The cracks in their marriage were there long before he went inside, he knew that, but he wasn’t willing to discuss it in their brief time together. Instead, he just got angry.
From the moment that the jury delivered that ‘guilty’ verdict, Johnny had been afraid that he was going to lose Rosie. He realised that, with him serving an 18-year sentence and their marriage already in trouble, it would only be a matter of time before he got the big heave-ho, the elbow, the goona. Whatever you call it, Johnny knew it was coming.
Each time she was late, his paranoia would kick in and he would start thinking that she wasn’t going to turn up at all. Sure, they’d had their fights before he went inside… but that was when the coke really had a grip on him. Even though he was inside, drugs were easily available. He was still using, occasionally, but they didn’t have the hold on him that they used to. He was clear-headed enough to know that, in his heart, he didn’t want to lose Rosie. He tried to think logically about what to do, and reason it through. But prison doesn’t teach you how to be logical, just paranoid.
In retrospect, during those first years away, Johnny had lived his life through Rosie, expecting her to do all the things he wasn’t able to. He hadn’t thought about her life – being alone in the outside world, with little Ruby. He assumed that Eddie was providing financially, but how she was feeling – mentally, physically, emotionally – that was anyone’s guess.
And it wasn’t just the monthly visits – Johnny demanded that she wrote twice a week. In Maidstone prison mail was distributed every Tuesday and Friday. Regular as clockwork, Johnny would start to get anxious the night before letter day. He would pace around his cell until the early hours, only ever pausing to wipe the sweat from his palms onto the front of his trousers, and worrying that the next letter would be a ‘Dear John’.
No sooner had the officers unlocked his cell, he would holler: ‘Where’s my letter, where’s my letter?’
If there was one, he would retreat to his cell, sit on his bed, and stare at the envelope, hoping and praying that it contained a ‘love you and miss you’ note, and not the dreaded alternative.
And if he didn’t get one, he would make the officers go through the bundles, checking and double checking. Eventually he would give up, storm back into his cell, and kick the wall. It was on those days that Johnny was best left well alone.
One person who made the mistake of not avoiding Johnny one letter-less Friday was his old mate Transit Nick, who had recently arrived at Maidstone on a six-month lay down.
‘Transit Nick’ was so named because he used to live in a van, not, as the police thought, because he had been a drug courier. Transit Nick had been a mate of Johnny’s for years, and they had worked together on numerous occasions… armed robberies, mostly. Johnny and Transit Nick had served time together elsewhere, and Johnny, although he was loath to admit it, used to consider him a close friend. After all, in the past they had always looked out for each other. But their relationship had never been an easy one. The only thing that Transit Nick loved more than getting into a fight himself, was to see Johnny fight; he loaded the gun, and Johnny would fire it.
Soon after Johnny was moved to Maidstone, he had heard through the grapevine that Transit Nick had turned bad, that he was ‘a wrong ’un’. This was not only dangerous, but also a real kick in the teeth for Johnny, who had considered him a friend. At first, he couldn’t believe it.
How could I have got him so wrong?
It really knocked him back that he was a no-good grass. And in Johnny’s world, there was no room for a grass. To make matters worse, the word was that Transit Nick had grassed on an old mate that Johnny and Eddie used to go out on jobs with. Yes, Transit Nick had turned out to be a right old mongrel.
So when Transit Nick arrived at Maidstone prison, Johnny decided that his number was up.
He’s played his games for long enough
. Johnny was going to hurt him, and hurt him bad, so that when Transit Nick looked in the mirror every morning, he’d see something to remember him by.
If you’re inside and want to hurt someone, you need a blade, which were pretty hard to come by, or a piece of glass. Glass is a rare commodity, and the only available substitute was in the form of Johnny’s hair-cream jar. Johnny waited, patiently watching, day by day, as the hair cream slowly ran down. In prison, Johnny had learnt to be a fairly patient man, which was something that didn’t come naturally to him.
He had intended to wait until he had used up the last of the hair cream, but one Friday he had seen Transit Nick talking to a screw. And not just a quick, ‘hello, goodbye’, but a real conversation. For Johnny, it was like Transit Nick advertising that he was a no-good grass. So Johnny rushed to his cell, smashed the bottle of hair cream, and, with cold precision, sharpened one edge on the stone windowsill. By the time that Johnny’s wing was called to the exercise yard, it was as sharp as a razor. He carefully wrapped a thin strip of old shirt material around the bottom half of the makeshift knife, slipped it into the pocket of his donkey jacket, and strolled out into the yard.
It didn’t take long to spot Transit Nick, and when he did, he couldn’t take his eyes off him. Transit Nick was laughing and chatting with another prison officer, clearly oblivious to the danger that he was facing. When Johnny did, eventually, look around the yard, he was given a sharp reminder that this was not the best venue for what he had planned. There was plenty of activity, lots of ears and eyes. Johnny quickly called over two cons, who he knew were prepared to do whatever was asked of them. He arranged a distraction – a mock fight on the opposite side of the exercise yard.