A row of six houses scoured by the wind. Mine on the end: red brick, black around the chimney, sky blue gutters and metal window frames, a front door with an oval window, higher than my head, tulips beaten into frosted glass. As good as any prison.

The removal man, my mother and Kath: two intruders and one friend, the only people who, since last summer, have stood in the lounge on the rectangle of paler carpet, the outline of Paul’s settee. They say, ‘At least you’re left with a decent view.’

All I see are the pylons stepping over black furrows and, five fields over, a high fence, bright lights trained on it, waiting for a madman in a leotard to toe the razor wire and make a show.

After the sacking he wanted me to go with him. As if. I had a promotion to plan. I asked for no favours and got none. Kept my tits to myself and my pants up. When the Governor told me I could take a break and work the gate, I said no. I did the work of a decent screw. That Paul didn’t, wasn’t, shouldn’t have come as a surprise: he never had screwed straight.

I took their crap, Braithwaite and all the others —‘Don’t you give out enough?’ My fault my husband had touched them up, his fine fingers wandering over their lardy arses. I maintained impressive sang-froid, the Governor wrote. Weaker souls would have buckled after Prison Officer’s Talbot’s indiscretions, but not PO June Talbot. First time, I bet, he’s ever had to refer to the first name of a rank and file. PO June Talbot’s hard work, thick skin and eye for a decent midfielder have earned her the respect of inmates—if not her peers—and for this I commend her to the promotion board.

Sang froid. I looked it up. Cold blood. Like an A block rapist, I nailed my promotion in cold blood. Senior Officer Talbot walks the talk while her watery husband hardens his soft hands filling shelves in Bi-Lo.

‘Do you think she cares?’ they say.

*

A rag taggle of women this side of the wire. The new ones looking like they’re out for a night on the town. Short skirts, white thighs, broken veins, sagging tits in plunging necklines dripping dirty gold. The ones who’ve been visiting before wear coats. A few come frumpy, wanting him to hold their hands not the stiffening in his crotch.

I pull up, wind the window down and wait the barrier out. I clamp my jaw. They know.

‘Look who it is, the pervert’s missus.’

‘No wonder he liked his chunky, with that piece of scrag end at home.’

‘Why wank at home over lean fillet, when he could wank at work over rump steak?’

I’m not the one waiting, nithered in a gale. I’m not the one who watched the police drag him out the door and refuse him bail. I’m not the one standing by my man.

I don’t say it. I don’t say anything until later when I find their paperwork’s wrong and bar them from the visit or order them strip searched: for their piece of cheek they have to bend and pull apart their cheeks for me.

The one bus from the Haymarket arrives two hours before we let them in. Last bus back leaves ten minutes before visits end and it’s never late. The new ones only miss it once. They break their heels on the two mile walk to the pub where the Branch Secretary has made sure they’re banned. In the days before mobiles, some kind heart stuffed up the phone box slots with ten-pence pieces. Every now and then you find a runty lass shivering in her Saturday night nothing wear, thumb out for a lift back to what she knows, the kids at her mother’s and no hope of ever having money for a minicab, or, even if she did, sweet talking one to way out here.

*

The tent appears, a grey unmoving blob, opposite the gate. My wipers sweep it on and off the radar screen. The radar ping: the cheap Taiwanese indicator of my cheap Taiwanese car. Through the rain I pick out a pair of black knickers dripping from a guy rope and think it a new girl solving the bus problem by playing Girl Guide, wanting those last ten minutes, and, for them, sleeping in a field. I make a right turn away from the scraping gate, then three minutes up the hill, another right onto rain-lashed concrete in front of the plastic kitchen window—the only window that doesn’t leak the rain and fart the wind. Even the frost hasn’t killed off his hydrangeas, I’ll Roundup them, no need now to stomach his dried-up geriatric colours bosoming over my front patch.

I call Kath and tell her someone’s trespassing on her land.

‘Where?’

‘The edge of the big flat field opposite the front gates,’ I say.

‘The edge. Not on the seed drill lines?’

‘The what?’

‘The crop. Where you can see the shoots.’

‘No, the edge, where it looks like you missed a bit,’ I say.

‘My set aside,’ she says. ‘Like your overtime: it’s paid for by the government and keeps me in wine. Greenpeace could set up camp on there and I wouldn’t mind.’

‘I’ll go by, make sure they’re digging a hole for their crap,’ I say. Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s left shit at the front gates.

‘Please yourself. They won’t stay long. The birds’ll wake them.’

‘What birds?’ I don’t hear them.

‘How big’s the tent?’ she asks.

‘Not that big.’

‘Then they’ll blow away before you can give them a hard time about slopping out.’

Maybe.

‘And June,’ Kath says, ‘Don’t set the dogs on them.’

*

‘When you going to quit the married quarters?’ Kath asks me the next time we get drunk.

‘Why quit them at all? I’m still married, aren’t I?’ Leaving was for Paul. I’m not leaving; I’m wondering whether a Senior Officer qualifies for double glazing.

Since Paul’s ‘indiscretions’ and the unwanted attentions of Married Frank—Principal Officer Carson—Kath and I have temporarily stopped drinking out. We go to hers because she has furniture. It’s New Year’s Eve, she calls me on her way back from the off-licence, says she’s taken a wine box into custody and has put it on a stay of execution until I’m over.

‘Why’d the prison employ a physical therapist anyway?’ she wants to know.

‘To do physical therapy.’

‘What? Give the inmates a hand job when it all gets too much?’

My Paul wasn’t like a steward on a ship. ‘He wasn’t bent, just bloody hopeless.’ I meant both kinds of bent. He couldn’t lie: he could only pretend to love, his soft hands and empty heart.

‘You didn’t mind me not buying fizzy?’ Kath asks.

‘I don’t like bubbles,’ I reply.

Kath thought we should make some resolutions. I couldn’t think of one. ‘You could be nicer to your mother,’ she says.

One of Kath’s labradors slobbers on the settee between us. The other splays out on the fire rug. I wonder whether they know the one was the mother of the other and whether or not they care.

‘D’you sort that camper’s toilet out?’ Kath asks.

‘I didn’t bother. Too wet.’

*

Kath undoes her jeans’ button, lets her gut expand and reaches out to the wine box. The settee's holding her back. I refill both our glasses and she says, ‘I know a bloke who turned his hill farm into a campsite. Makes a mint. All tall grass and midgies.’

‘My idea of fun.’

‘He mows out neat little pitches, nicely separated in neat little cul de sacs, each with a neat little number, picnic table and twee tree. They flock up there.’ She takes a tart swig and drowns the beginning of an idea. ‘Down here it wouldn’t work: I wouldn’t get the punters.’

‘Too flat and boring,’ I say. ‘But no midgies.’

‘Aye, I could advertise it midge and mountain free and not mention the gale,’ Kath cackles, tapping into the ashtray teetering on the arm rest. ‘I could say there’s sea views.’

‘What about the pylons and the open cast reclamation land?’

‘What about the cold?’

‘My washing’s been out since last Tuesday. My knickers are as hard as boards.’

Kath hacks her laugh out. ‘I suppose you’re missing him doing your laundry.’

‘I need a wife, Kath. I need a wife.’ I pick at the disintegrating false leather of Kath’s settee. ‘And some furniture.’
‘Don’t get me started. Before I’ll even think about a wife, I need a new tractor and a new bed. I’m sick of waking up, my arse halfway to the floor skewered by a sprung spring. I need a new horse and a man to muck it out,’ she said. Kath’s strong hands maul the wine box, ripping it open to its silver foil heart. She wrings the last of it out into our glasses and throws the box on the coals.

*

The Governor nearly had him back. Desperate to keep his precious football team, he had the gall to ask the victims whether it would be acceptable to them for Paul to come in on weekends and Wednesdays for the training, on a voluntary basis. To keep his hand in. Not a good choice of words.

They weren’t having it. Started up through the Association another complaint—harassment from the Governor for even suggesting it.

One of them said, ‘Get June to do it.’ The goalie—Willie, nice lad, inept burglar, but a nice lad—said, ‘Get June to do it.’ The whole team started a Get June To Do It petition. I was a better tactician than Paul, they said. I knew the team, they said. I knew the game, they said.

Paul reckoned Eriksson had been right to play all five across midfield.

I disagreed.

‘What, you’d have left Gerrard on the bench, or Beckham?’ Paul said.

‘I’d have chosen one.’

‘How to choose between them?’

You have to make a choice.

I gave Black, the pale lad from D, a go. Thick glasses, great swivel. The Durham lifers were skinned alive.

*

Through the wire, one hundred meters or more separating us from her, a woman looked on. Moving her lips, biting her nails, applauding good passes. Like a fan. Odd get up, shorts over black tights, boots platforms of mud from plodging over Kath’s crop, a bobble hat, a red rain coat. She hunched her shoulders against the cold. I radioed the gate, asked them to check out an unknown person on the perimeter fence, picked up the bucket and the magic sponge and told Denny he had to play on or he’d not be back in for a month. Whistle. Half-time team talk. Keep it on the park. Midfield’s yours if you want it. Quit bickering at the back, one of you goes up to meet the lad, the other drops back to cover. Not so far back you’re pushing your arse into Willie’s dick. Think Alan Hansen not fucking Rio Ferdinand.

Start of second half, she’d gone. The gate radioed to say they’d escorted her back to her tent. The camper, then. She’d told them to tell me our left midfield was a better channel: their right wing, on a yellow, wasn’t tracking back. She was right and wrong. Their right wing was a cunning little cunt intent on violence. Playing down his channel played into his world of anger. He’d already smashed up Denny, and, like Eriksson before me, I didn’t have a surplus of left-sided players. It’s one thing to look in through the wire but another to assume you’re seeing everything.

***

About the Author

Sarah Moor is a writer from the UK, living in Brisbane. "June" is an extract from her novel, Trace, written as part of an MA in Creative Writing, funded by the Australian Federation of University Women, Queensland.

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