John Matthews: Ascension Day

‘ Libreville was in fact originally a slave plantation dating back to the 1830s, and its name came from the West African port where most of the slaves were shipped from, with the change from plantation to penitentiary coming in the early 1900s when…

Jac’s cell-phone rang. He looked at the display: his mother or younger sister. He stopped the tape and answered.

His mother, Catherine, quickly launched into a subject she’d broached at the weekend past when he’d visited.

‘Have you given it much thought yet?’ she pressed.

‘A bit,’ he lied. Even without the Durrant case, he wouldn’t have given it much consideration. Arranged date; he thought that sort of thing had died out a century ago. ‘But I haven’t decided yet.’

‘Well, let me know when you have. She came by the other day with her father to Aunt Camille’s place, and she seems a very nice girl. And attractive, too.’

Jac sighed. ‘Come on, mum. This is more about pleasing Camille than you or, more importantly, me. One more step in her social-climbing ladder.’

‘That’s true. She’s from a very good family, and no doubt that’s what Camille saw first. But now having met the girl, it would be easy for you to forget that this is all about Camille. You could get on very well.’ Catherine sighed. ‘And it has been a while now since Madeleine.’

Madeleine. Madeleine . Thirty-seven months, to be precise, just before they’d left France. Perhaps his mum was right: If she was nice and they got on, what harm could it do? But most of all, he could hear the uncertainty, almost desperation, in his mother’s voice. The need to do this to please Camille. And that part of him made him want to rebel, say no.

His mother and sister stayed in one of Camille’s houses in Hammond at only half rent, and Camille also paid half of Jean-Marie’s college fees. He paid the other half; his was the only family work-visa so far granted, and it was all he could afford while doing criminal law bar exams. Meanwhile his mum and sister lived partly in his aunt’s pocket, part of the legacy left by his father’s early death and disastrous state of affairs at the time — which his aunt took every opportunity to remind them of: ‘What a mess Adam left. All of his wild dreaming. So lucky I was there to help all of you.’

Jac’s aunt was the exact opposite of his father. Maybe that’s why he rebelled and railed so against any of her suggestions: in part, it kept alive his father’s spirit.

‘Okay, I’ll think seriously about it. But if I agree to it, I’m doing it for you or because I feel it’s right — not for Camille.’

‘That’s very noble. But you need to please yourself first and second on this, Jac — not anybody else.’

‘I know.’ With a promise that he’d let her know that weekend when he came over, he rang off.

After the argument through the wall the night before, the only girl he’d given any thought to had been his next door neighbour, starting to wonder what she might look like. He’d purposely listened out for her movements as he got ready that morning: she was still moving around inside when he left, but if he timed it right one morning, hopefully he’d get to see her on the corridor.

He shook his head, smiling. Obsessing over a girl just from a few sound-bites through a wall. His mother was right: he had been too long without a date.

Jac switched on Langfranc’s tape again, and, as he approached Libreville, the details started to mirror what he saw through his car window.

‘ Spread over 17,000 acres in total, with the closest towns Libreville, four miles away — which sprung up shortly after the plantation was founded — and St Tereseville, seventeen miles away. The term “plantation” hung on until the mid-sixties, when it was dropped because it smacked too much of the early slave days, and was replaced with ‘ranch’ — possibly due to its sheer size, the fact that they rear their own cattle as well as farm, and have an annual rodeo. The term could easily evoke a laid-back High Chaparral -style atmosphere — but don’t be fooled. This is hard-graft, rock-breaking Cool-Hand Luke territory all the way .’

Jac approached the main gate of Libreville. Fourteen foot high, matching the perimeter fence, with another three-foot of rolled razor wire on top.

After announcing his meeting with Chief Warden Haveling and handing over his card, Jac checked his watch while the guard phoned through for confirmation. Four minutes late; not too bad. But from the sprawl of the place, it looked like it was going to take him another four or five to actually get to Haveling’s office.

The guard returned, handed him back his card, and pointed along the shale road ahead.

‘Ignore the first three buildings, two one side, one the other — all single storey — and after a lil’ more than a mile, you’ll see the main building. Can’t miss it. Rises up four floors out o’ nowhere. Visitors’ parking on the right.’

‘Thanks.’

‘… Three thousand eight-hundred inmates — forty per cent increase since the late fifties, which led to three new blocks being built in the grounds. All high risk or death row prisoners are held in the main block, with time allowed out of holding cells for them just two hours a day, unless they have allocated duties or privileges — though that never includes field work. Their work assignments are again all within the main block, which is like a fortress.’

Of the half-dozen or so workers that Jac passed that troubled to look his way, at best they were sullenly curious, at worst surly and menacing; no smiles. It was difficult for Jac to believe that these were the best of the bunch.

‘ Sixty-one per cent African-American inmates, sixteen per cent mixed race, and twenty-three per cent white. And with the guards, that ratio is reversed. Only nineteen per cent are black or mixed race — though a marked improvement on twenty or thirty years ago. Take the clock back to the early sixties, and there wasn’t a single black guard.’

But as Jac entered deeper into the bowels of Libreville’s main block, he began to appreciate the difference. Here, at best the stares were surly, at worst taunting and disturbingly intense; and there were a few smiles, though invariably leering and slanted, as if fuelled by madness, or challenging, as if viewing him as prey.

Jac felt that the stifling oppression and heat of the block — unless he was imagining it — seemed to be getting more intense as he progressed, pressing heavier on him with each guard check-point and heavy steel gate opened and bolted shut behind him. And as a few sexual taunts were thrown at him as he passed the cells — ‘Like the way you walk, pretty boy’, ‘Sweet ass — I could fuck you right through that Armani’ — he felt his face tingle and burn.

He was probably still flushed, agitated, his shirt sticking to his skin, as he was ushered into the contrasting coolness of Warden Haveling’s wood-panelled office. But he knew immediately — unless Haveling had taken to appearing as surly as his prisoners or was far more upset by his tardiness than he’d envisaged — that something serious was wrong.

It was that time of day.

Leonard Truelle nursed the two fingers of Jim Beam between his hands with due reverence, as if warming his hands through the glass. Then, with a faint gleam of expectation in his eyes, brought it to his lips and felt its warmth and aroma trickle slowly down. He closed his eyes in appreciation. Pure nectar. With a part sigh, part murmur as he felt its after-burn, he set the glass slowly down.

The hand clamping over his came an inch before the tumbler touched the table, and he flicked his eyes open again, startled.