Mad Cows (9 page)

From broad-side, Chanel appeared, seizing Sputnik's head and buffeting it against the bench. Stacey let out a blood-curdling whoop and pug-slugged Chanel in the snoz. It split spectacularly open. Blood geysered over them all. Chanel ju-jitsued Stacey, who cannoned on to the floor. And then it was on. Caught in the eye of a tornado of Lycraed limbs, tattooed arms and shaven legs, Maddy lost sight of Alex.

Fights were inevitable in a women's prison. There
was
only a window of about one day a month in which they weren't all either suffering PMT, the menopause, ovulation cramps or post-natal depression. Even the prison cat was a female. It was like ‘Welcome to Hormone World! Step right up! Ride the Emotional Rollercoaster of Your Choice!'

Maddy was dimly aware of the harrowing pulse of the ‘aggro bell'. Through the human squall, she could see Mamma Joy flailing about in an ineffective semaphore. If she'd been ground staff, she'd have landed a whole fleet of jumbo jets by the time the herd of overweight officers lumbered along the jail's concrete intestines. They ran heavily, as if trying to steam-roller the linoleum back into place, flattening a distraught Petronella and the directorless film crew against the wall.

‘OK, girls, let's talk it through,' demanded the officer in charge.

Sputnik and Maddy, in a gesture which made Pamela Anderson look articulate, were in a hair-lock, wincing with pain, both refusing to let go. A gnomic male screw pinned Sputnik's arms up into the restraint position.

Maddy was similarly half-Nelsoned. In her hand was a wodge of Sputnik's purple hair. She could taste blood trickling down the back of her throat. Through eyes which were rapidly swelling shut, she noted that Alex was nowhere to be seen.

‘Who started it?' the officer in charge persisted.

Maddy shrugged. ‘I don't know her name.'

‘Can you describe her?'

‘That's what I was doing when she walloped me, nong-brain!'

The officer nodded to his off-siders and Maddy was woman-handled to the surgery on C wing.

A doctor Maddy suspected had gained his degree from the Botswana Woodwork and Handicrafts Department was making a half-hearted daub with a disinfected swab at Maddy's more serious abrasions with what looked like a recycled corn pad – when Dwina goose-stepped into view.

‘Where's Alex?' Maddy asked desperately. ‘Did you talk to him?'

‘Well,' Dwina hhumphed. ‘This is certainly a unique method of obtaining bail.'

‘He's here! My baby's father! He can straighten everything out.'

Dwina, wearing her Hostess with the Mostest expression, patted Maddy's hand. ‘You're suffering from post-natal depression, dear.'

Maddy thrashed to sitting position and swung her long legs to the floor. ‘You've got to find him!'

Dwina and the doctor forced her back on to the examination table, tethering her down with leather ties. ‘You're neurotic and highly stressed.'

‘Gee, you're right . . . Maybe I'm not getting out enough.'

‘I don't think you realize just how seriously this little incident could set you back.' Dwina stroked the creased material in her lap as though soothing a fractious cat. ‘Officer Slynne is going to object to bail, on the grounds that you may well be charged with infanticide.'

Where was Alex? Maddy thought frantically. She refused to believe his Vamoosing Gene had kicked in. Not again
. ‘Now he can add a count of grievous bodily harm. The Governor tends to lock troublemakers like you in the strip cells.'
But if not, then where the hell was he? Was the father of her child really so determined to make a footnote of himself as the Biggest Bastard Act in Recorded History?

‘The Segregation Unit is the grimmest, dirtiest, coldest corner of the prison. Are you listening to me?'
Maddy realised with a jolt that he hadn't even asked her about Jack. She made a mental reservation at Anguish Café. Never kick a woman unless she's down. Was that his credo?

‘You must centre yourself, Maddy. Stop projecting. I mean, what on earth do you think you are doing?'

‘Um . . .? Rounding out my prison tan?'

Dwina waited until the doctor had left the room before taking Maddy's face in her hands. ‘You can trust me, Madeline. I am your friend.' She untied the leather restraints. ‘Your
only
friend. I'm offering you an intimate human interaction . . . yet all you do is put up barriers.'

‘Hey, six in a cell getting into their pyjamas
simultaneously
makes intimate human interaction sort of unavoidable, you know?'

‘
Where is your baby?
'

When Maddy didn't answer, Dwina made a disappointed adjustment to her mouth. The voice now emerging from it had taken on a tone of weary admonition. ‘So you smuggled him out. So what? Even if you do ever get out of jail, which after today's little demonstration I doubt, you'll just be one more single mother.'
Maddy had to face facts. Her prince had come, seen . . . and pissed off as fast as his chauffeured car would carry him
. ‘Children of single mothers have their noses pressed into life's rectal canal. They consistently obtain lower educational qualifications than their IQs imply. They get the worst jobs. Is that what you want?' Dwina folded her arms and glared at Maddy, who was staring despondently at the shelf of self-help books –
Constructive Depression: How To Make the Best of Feeling Down
. ‘Obviously you like theatre – I saw you signed up for playgroup. Well, all the world's a stage, Maddy. And
you
can write the script. Think of your child. Think of
Jack
.'

Maddy swallowed hard. As if she had done anything else. She was constantly savaged by daydreams. Was Gillian giving Jack toys which were chew-proof? Was she checking whether plastic wheels could be pulled off? Maybe he'd swallowed one already? Did she know what to do if he was choking? Maddy tugged agitatedly at the paper napkin she was
wearing
, incongruously called a gown – she'd written shopping lists on paper longer than this.

‘Is it a financial incentive you want?' Dwina continued with controlled urgency. ‘Demand for adoption has never been higher. Babies are a commodity. A rare commodity. Loop-holes in the law mean that richer couples can gazump those going through legal channels . . .
are you with me
?

The sullen doctor sidled back into the surgery with Sputnik in tow, a mauve ellipse beneath her right eye. He tossed Maddy her clothes, indicating the conclusion of the consultation. The worst thing about being sick in prison was having no place to stay home from.

As Sputnik painfully mounted the examination table Maddy had just vacated, she slyly regurgitated a small swodge of paper from beneath her tongue and secreted the crumpled note into Maddy's palm. On the pretext of tying her laces, Maddy unscrunched the note. ‘You rottn cow. Do wot I want or yor ded meet. Lawndry. Fursday. 5 p.m.' The dots above the I's were plump little circles and every second word was high-lighted with an inky aura of penstrokes.

Oh great, Maddy thought, gingerly shrugging on her cardigan; my baby's busy bonding with a woman whose main concern is the number of shopping years left until the turn of the century; my boobs are on the point of a nuclear meltdown; my social worker is after my inner and
outer
child; I'm still in love with the sort
of
Male Feminist who thinks the ‘glass ceiling' is a club for coprophiliacs; chances of bail are Jody Kidd slim and I'm about to be raped by a woman who has the words. ‘Hoover My Love Rug' tattooed on her lower abdomen.

Her only hope was acceptance into some sort of Witness Protection Scheme, with immediate relocation somewhere safe – say, deep space with Captain Kirk and Scottie at cruise speed. All she'd done was to go to Harrods for a packet of prunes and
now
look at her. If only she could rewind events and start again. Take Two. If all the world's a stage, Maddy thought to herself morosely, then where the hell was her dressing room?

8

Taking the Bitter With The Suite

ONE TODDLER HAD
the plastic submarine from a cereal box wedged up his nose. Another was making a pudendum out of playdough. Two were noshing ecstatically on the Styrofoam packing which had housed the brand-new Hamley's Fireman Sam engine they were resolutely ignoring. All the wooden rattles and posting boxes bought by over-anxious stage-parents at vast expense lay idly cast aside. The best toys you could give an infant, Gillian realized looking around, was a half-masticated earthworm or a Black and Decker power drill (complete with small sibling).

The pre-speech bababa dadda babble at the Rosy Futures Child Modelling Agency was deafening. Baby pit-stops popped up everywhere across the mottled shagpile, as thirty or so mothers laid out their
change
-mats and descended with ‘wet-ones' to wipe up Dijon-mustard-coloured ‘poopies'.

Babies, lying on their backs, frantically bicycle-kicked as though competing in the Tour de France. Those not pedalling to Paris lay on their tummies, tiny heads raised like periscopes to peer beadily around at their pint-sized rivals.

‘One of life's mysteries, drape-ape,' Gillian philosophized to her bonsai charge, ‘is that less is more. The smaller the bikini, the more expensive. The less food, cuisine minceur for example, the more expensive. No food at all proves to be the most exorbitant of the lot. I'm talking Health Farm, rusk-breath. Which is also why a weenie little ankle-biter like you gets up to eight hundred pounds plus residuals for a TV commercial requiring you to display slightly more cognitive development than an inebriated stockbroker on a Friday night.'

Jack answered her with a loud and resonant raspberry from his rear end. ‘Do you
mind
?' Gillian protested, mopping up a dead-sea of drool from his chin. ‘We'll have no heckling from the stalls. In the money department, however, less is well, less. So from now on I'm redefining our relationship. Forget that Mum-Mum rubbish. Em-ploy-
er
.' Gillian pointed to herself. ‘Em-ploy-
ee
.' She gestured to Jack. ‘Yes, I think you'll make a wonderful member of my staff. At least you won't always be flirting by the drinking fountain or clogging up my phone bills with personal calls.'

Rosy – the lace and leopard-skin trussed, nauseatingly young (she made Gillian feel positively Paleolithic) agency manageress – was culling the A-babies for photographic sessions and screen tests in the studio. The B-babies were being sent unceremoniously home. Mothers clenched the heads of squealing tots between their denimed knees, to coat microscopic eyelashes in mascara. Teeny-weeny cheeks were surreptitiously rouged; itsy-bitsy mouths were secretly tinted darker shades. To say that the atmosphere was competitive would be like saying piranhas are caring and sharing. Edgy and tense, mascara-wands poised, lipsticks uncased, the mums sneaked sideways glances at the miniature contenders; curling a sceptical lip at any infant they felt wasn't quite up to par.

All around them, babies were bribed with chocolate to go into their ‘child-in-a-manger' routines. Jack, on the other hand, was busy eating his snot. Only a few days to go, tops, Gillian thought elatedly. Then she could hand It over to Its mother.

‘Next?'

‘Stop making that “I-don't-want-to-go-anywhere-with-any-body-at-any-time” face,' Gillian threatened, snaffling Jack up. ‘You'll thank me when your mug is on that toilet roll.'

‘Name?'

‘Jack Wolfe.'

‘Age?'

‘Five weeks.'

Rosy's rough, careless hands prodded Jack's body with practised indifference. She did everything but mount him on a microscope slide.

‘Hmmm,' she said, dismissively. ‘Milk spots.'

‘What?'

‘Look. Little pinhead spots around the bridge of his nose.'

‘
Acne?
You're saying he's got acne? At
his
age? Oh,
fab
ulous. What's next? Miming Jimi Hendrix guitar solos and setting fire to his farts?'

Rosy was scratching at the baby's scalp with a stiletto nail. ‘Cradle cap.'

‘What the hell's that?'

‘Dry flaky skin. You should oil it, you know.'

‘Dandruff? You're rejecting a child with
his
looks and personality because he's slightly dermatologically challenged?'

Rosy was checking her watch and casting a professionally calculating eye along the waiting row of potential ad fodder. ‘Also oral thrush, sucking blisters and sticky eye.'

‘If you knew this child's gene stock . . .' Gillian propped Maddy's baby up on a desk already overburdened with photographic paraphernalia. ‘This is the stuff of which high-octane Tycoon types are made! Dah-ling, we're talking Gene-Pool.
Designer
gene pool . . . Gene Pool Gaultier . . .' Jack chose that moment to give himself a euphoric whack on his forehead with a rattle.

‘Indeed?' Rosy said, archly.

Gillian found herself executing a Mr Bean repertoire of facial grimaces to entertain Maddy's baby. ‘Smile!' she urged, through clenched teeth. Jack responded with a blank stare. ‘Smile, you little bastard!' she snapped. His tiny face concaved in misery. ‘Oh, good God. Don't cry . . . Your eyes will go puffy.' Unable to locate his dummy, Gillian shoved the knuckle of her index finger into the baby's wailing mouth. ‘I know it's not the real thing, nose-miner . . . Look on it as methadone,' she ordered him, furiously.

Holding her contempt in check, Rosy tapped her well-shod foot irritably. Gillian could feel a case of ‘don't call us; we
won't
call you' coming on. Smiling ingratiatingly, she continued in an uncharacteristically unctuous and pianissimo tone. ‘Normally, I am not prone to grovelling. It so ladders one's stockings. But . . . the problem is,' she whispered, ‘I am deeply insolvent.
Cement
is more solvent than I . . .'