Naomi Hewston

Pretty Thin Veneer

Novel extract

‘On Wednesdays, you do the hall, the office and the stairs. On Fridays, the hall, the staff kitchen and the showers, but don’t forget the toilets—you must do the toilets. One part solution, three parts water—too much and you’ll have too many bubbles, too little and you won’t kill the germs. You might as well be swishing the dirt around. I can’t stress enough how important it is to get the balance right.’ 

The sallow-skinned young man plunged the mop into the bucket and dragged its sodden, dripping end into the drainer, where he twisted it several times. The water was already black.

 ‘You must make sure you don’t make the floors so wet that they won’t dry by the time the workers return. There’s a wet floor sign you can put down in the corridor, that way no one can say they never saw it, and you cover your back.’ He made a limp gesture to the storage cupboard from which he’d procured his cleaning trolley. ‘The trick to getting a good clean is to refill the bucket every five metres with hot, but not scalding water. Fill it at least six times to complete the whole sweep. Should take you 40 minutes, top and bottom.’ 

Brennan slammed the mop down on the linoleum, sending splatters of dirty water in all directions. I stepped onto one foot, avoiding a projectile destined for my Converse All-Stars. I’d come prepared—he wasn’t getting my lily-whites this time. 

‘Are you even listening to me? Look, you’re already late, and we’ve got a lot to get through. If you’re going to be my replacement, you need to listen up. I’ve set a standard in this job that’s come to be expected.’ Despite their dullness, Brennan’s black eyes twinkled with pride. ‘See the colour of the water? It’s time to refill.’ He stooped, lifted the bucket by its handle and held it out to me. ‘Your turn, I’ll supervise you, because as of tomorrow, you’re on your own.’  

I took the bucket to the shower room, keeping it at arm’s length to avoid the overspill, and carefully emptied it in one of the stalls. I held my breath—it smelled like something had died down there. The brass tap screeched and hissed as I turned it, the pipes rattling like they were about to combust. I filled the bucket to roughly three-quarters and returned to Brennan, who’d just placed the wet floor sign in the middle of the corridor.

‘Looks about right,’ he said, looking seriously over the water level. ‘Now add the solution. Remember, one part solution—’

‘Three parts water,’ I chimed.

 He pointed to the fluorescent yellow bottle at his feet. ‘Go on, then.’

 I unscrewed the lid and sloshed in a good helping.

‘Does that look like the right amount to you?’

I searched Brennan’s face for humour but found none there. Beneath the paper-thin skin of his forehead, the muscles twitched.

‘Add some more,’ he said, half plea, half command.

I tilted the bottle over the steaming bucket and poured until he barked for me to stop. 

‘You take this very seriously, don’t you?’ I laughed.

‘The worker who did this before me didn’t do it properly, he always missed the corners. If you can’t do a job properly, you shouldn’t be doing it, and you shouldn’t be getting paid for it.’ 

‘Right, the ten quid a month,’ I returned. ‘You know what I say, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.’ 

Brennan shot a disapproving look at me and dunked the mop into the water, his chapped fists tight on the wooden handle. As he did so, I caught the gleam of something swinging from a chain around his neck. A signet ring? Get out of town. 

‘Family emblem, is it?’

His fingers found the trinket and tucked it under his collar. 

‘Well, go on, you can tell me. It’s clear you and I are cut from a similar cloth. Where did you go?’

Silence.

God this guy was dull. Still, I couldn’t repress my excitement that someone in this dump might have something in common with me. Now that I thought about it, he had the best elocution I’d heard in years. 

‘St Peter’s, eighth generation, myself,’ I said. 

His eyes flickered in defeat. ‘Chilterns. Means nothing here.’

‘So, how do you do it, blend in here? I’ve been in a few days and already made enemies. It’s like living with animals.’ 

‘We’re all animals.’

‘Ah, but some of us are lions, and some of us are cockroaches.’

He wrung the mop several times in the bucket. ‘No wonder you have a black eye,’ he muttered. ‘You should be more humble, your shit stinks just the same as everyone else’s. You want to know how I blend in? I left my high horse outside the courtroom.’

Ouch.

When I’d put my name down for work, mopping floors wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind. I’d imagined myself doing general maintenance, picking up litter outside or weeding the pavements as I’d seen others do from my cell window, or working in the laundry unit, a small cabin by the recreation area where the hum of industrial washing machines and tumble dryers perpetually sounded, where cons came and went, pushing trolleys laden with sheets and clothing. But Officer Shawcross had really hammered home how lucky I was for securing a job in my first week, exempting me from the workshop where other cons earned their keep. Grafton’s wood and metal workshop ran five days a week, four hours a day, in an effort to replicate real work. The only way to get out of this was to have a job around the prison or be in full-time education. He said most cons spent months on the waiting list for a job like mine. I wanted to be able to buy snacks and other luxuries from the prison shop, perhaps subscribe to a magazine, if anything in the limited catalogue took my fancy. But surely, cleaning toilets and washing up after filthy screws was the lowliest position in the prison. 

Brennan followed with a critical eye as I completed my first few sweeps of the ground floor, lecturing me on ‘proper mopping technique’. His penchant for cleanliness was evidently a grade above my own. Since my first day when he’d destroyed my pumps, I’d seen him several times on the wing, sweeping and mopping, polishing the door handles, macing the hallway with a lavender-scented mist, but not once until now had we exchanged words. Now I’d learned all there was to know about the art of mopping, but of him, I knew only his name and the fact that he was in denial of his background—and that he was being released tomorrow, something he seemed unnaturally blasé about. 

What was he in for anyway? If he loved rules so much, how on Earth did he end up breaking the law? I decided he was either a fraudster or a nonce, and that the only reason he treasured his job so much was because it meant the others left him alone. Who’d pick on the guy who scrubbed the shit from their toilet? Or perhaps this was all he lived for, a purpose that his freedom would only take away. Whatever the reason, he followed me, tutting and shaking his head, pointing here and there to invisible spots I’d missed. He hadn’t the slightest interest in talking about the prospect of his new life outside, at least not with me.

‘You’re not done yet, you’ve got to mop the showers and the kitchen,’ he said after I’d pulled off my marigolds. ‘You’ve taken twenty minutes to do the corridor when by now you should be on the counters, plates and cups.’ 

‘You’re joking, I’m not washing up after the screws! What am I, a skivvy?’

His eyes widened with disbelief, the only emotion they seemed capable of portraying. ‘Actually, don’t answer that,’ I sighed.

 On Friday mornings, Brennan told me, the cell doors were left unlocked in preparation for his mop. Most of the cons were out at work during this time, and the wing was his.

‘So, you’re telling me I’ve got to go into other con’s cells?’

‘How else will they get clean?’

‘But I’ve always cleaned my own cell.’

‘What is it you don’t understand about this place? We operate on trust here, we’re not like other institutions. Some folk will wash your pants, some will launder your wank-stained sheets. You’ll mop their floors. One hand strokes another.’

‘Washes the other.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. I’m just worried someone will accuse me of stealing or something.’

Brennan thrust the fluorescent bottle into my chest with a huff. ‘You only get offered this job if the screws know they can trust you. In all my years, I’ve received nothing but respect in this position. For someone who’s been inside for years, you’re a novice.’

‘Well, I’ve only been in solitary—’ 

‘Keep your nose out of other people’s business, look the other way if you see contraband. I’m not your advisor. This is elementary stuff. I’ll do downstairs, you do upstairs, but don’t get used to it. Next week, you’re on your own.’ 

I started with my own cell as a warm-up, swishing the mop quickly over the floor to see how long it would take. Eight seconds. I moved on to the one opposite and did it in six. I scarcely glanced at the cells as I worked, too afraid of the occupier strolling in just as I stopped to nose at his habitat. All of them were less tidy than my own, despite their privilege of unpadded furniture. Some had clothes strewn everywhere and overflowing ashtrays, football memorabilia or posters of half-naked women, much like mine. The toilets all reeked. I built up quite a sweat dashing in and out of each room, dampening the tiles just enough to give the impression of an effort.

As I wheeled the bucket towards the end of the landing, I got a strange jitter in the pit of my stomach. I’d been so preoccupied with my task that I hadn’t considered that one of the cells belonged to Ben. Nothing I’d spied had hinted even vaguely at his occupancy, though what even would a hint look like? A pair of dumbbells—unlikely they’d be allowed. A men’s fitness magazine? White trainers lying on the floor? 

I recalled him receding towards the end of the wing the day before with that laugh that had haunted and unsettled me, caused me to feel both nauseous and aroused, until I had no choice but to relieve myself to be rid of it. How he’d brought back thoughts of Hugh Langley and the shame of my childhood misdemeanour. Now, as I moved towards the last two cells, the jittering in my core intensified. 

Clements’s words had troubled me all night. I’d lain awake in the dark, turning over that cliché phrase, trying to pull meaning from it. Birds of a feather flock together. Me and Ben? What the hell was he getting at? We shared a wing, that was true, but so did 48 other men. Were we all the same? I knew from my years at Ashford that they put cons with similar convictions on the same stretch, which was why I’d been thrown in with the murderers before they’d segregated me for my own safety and lumped me with the nonces instead. Had Ben killed somebody? Is that what he meant?

I inched closer to the last two doors, my legs piloted by an unknown force. It was as if I had picked up on a pheromone trail—what else led me to turn left and pulled my eyes to the cobalt vest that hung from the back of the chair in cell 47? What else caused my pulse to quicken, my hand to stretch out and touch the fabric, to take in its limp, shapeless form and gather it between my fingers, to imagine for a moment that the warmth from the sunlight still drenched in its weave was that of the body that had discarded it? 

I watched my actions with no means of controlling them. My hands balled up the garment and burrowed it away under my sweatshirt. What was I doing? 

The voices of Brennan and Shawcross sounded a distance away, a drone of vocal excrement that showed no sign of ceasing. I straightened my sweatshirt with shaking hands. Breathing in, I caught a pulpy, woody smell that reminded me of a classroom, of pencil sharpenings, chalk, paper. I took in the walls, adorned with art prints, the largest of which graced the head of the bed and depicted some sort of pope figure behind a ghostly drape, its fists bunched on the arms of a throne and a nightmarish scream on his face. Grotesque. Though it was eyeless, it gave me a feeling of being watched. How did anyone sleep with that looking over them?  

Another print I recognised as a Mondrian, coloured squares just like the kitchen tiles at Furze Hill. Black and white photographs of buildings and obscure architectural shapes, concrete and glass, a postcard of the Eiffel Tower, that famous picture of workers on a New York skyscraper—an eclectic mix of no obvious persuasion or taste. He’d covered the walls like the rest of us, but in comparison, his had imagination, personality. I felt shame now at the thought of my own decor, how primitive it was.

The voices in the hall went on. There was still time. I perused a pile of papers on the desktop, turning over a sheet scored with handwriting—forward-sloping arabesques, not one word identifiable. Beside the pile was a blue notebook. I glanced over my shoulder, confirmed that no one was watching, and lifted the cover. 

Pencil drawings. It was full of them. And not cartoons either, but detailed sketches of people, both male and female. Anatomical studies, as though drawn from life. But when, and where? Surely not in here. I turned the pages, impressed by their realism, by the contrast between soft and hard, the way he’d captured shade and light with simple lead. The figures looked like they could leap from the page.

And I had you down as an uncultured meathead.

I turned my attention to a bookshelf laden with hardbacks—Art Nude, Flesh, The Human Form, and quite naturally, Gray’s Anatomy, Of course: his reference library. 

Conscious of the sagging bulge under my sweatshirt. I reached for the mop, only then to be side-tracked by another image. Two ruddy-faced children peered out at me from a grainy photograph propped against the bedside lamp—a boy and a girl, draped by the arms of a woman whose hair was the same vibrant copper as theirs. In the background was a grey strip of sea and a pier, much of it hidden under an overhanging fog. A typical British seaside holiday. I recognised the boy by his eyes, as if I needed further proof that this was his lair. Even the poor-quality print couldn’t dull their magnificence. 

There was something else behind it, another photograph peeking out, hidden from display. I peeled back the one in front, bowed my head to get a closer look. It was the same flame-haired boy, now a teenager dressed in black speedos, holding a medal up to the camera with the widest smile on his face. His adolescent frame was unfilled and sinewy, but there were hints of what was to come in the foundations—the wide shoulders and attenuated trunk, just waiting for the bulk of manhood. I ran my finger down the shimmering, wet torso.

A phlegmy cough rattled in the doorway. I seized the mop just as Brennan’s black eyes locked onto me. 

‘What are you doing?’ 

I looked down at the mop and then back at him. 

‘Cleaning.’

Brennan stepped closer, a mistrustful crease on his forehead. I watched him study the room for a moment as if he knew its contents well and was attuned to its specifics. 

‘You shouldn’t touch other people’s things,’ he said. 

‘I didn’t.’ 

The bundle under my sweatshirt seemed to have grown heavier since I’d stuffed it there.

‘People know when you’ve touched things.’ 

‘I haven’t.’ 

He looked at the photograph of Ben, the scantily clad, teenage Ben by the poolside. Perhaps his trained eye hadn’t seen it before. 

I stopped mopping, my arms tense.

‘People know things,’ he said. ‘If you flaunt things, they are easily found out.’ He raised a hand in front of the photograph and paused for a moment before pushing it back behind the family holiday snapshot, then his eyes met mine. ‘And when people know things about you, they can use them against you.’

 My cheeks burned as he looked me over, suspecting, I feared, that my shape had changed, that I appeared more front-heavy than I had a moment ago. I held the mop in front of me as if it could hide me, like a dumb animal that thinks it can’t be seen if it can’t see you. 

‘Hurry up, the workers will be back in ten minutes,’ Brennan said.

I returned the trolley to its rightful place, and Brennan locked the door behind it, then he turned to me and drew a half-breath. He looked at his feet, shook his head, and let the breath go. ‘Just do a good job,’ he coughed. 

He didn’t lift his head as he thrust out the key like a man handing the leash of a beloved dog to the vet who must euthanize it. I took it from him and stuffed it into my pocket. Voices began to roll in from the stairwell. The workers were returning from their shifts. Brennan shuffled towards his cell without a word.  

‘Good luck on the outside!’ I called after him. But I suspected it was me who was going to need it.