Clara stood calmly on the raised platform of
the town hall stage, Alice by her side. In front of her the town’s people were
packed in to the rafters. There were so many bodies in there it was difficult
to breathe. The air was so saturated with condensation that many of the more
short sighted citizens had to keep wiping their glasses.
For a town that hardly spoke to each other
this was unprecedented. Already whipped up into a frenzy by the press, wooden
bats and torches at the ready, they stood in breathless anticipation of what
she would say. So many people suddenly hanging on your every word, where before
you couldn’t even get your family to listen to you…or the dog, was an
electrifying sensation. There is something about being imbued with power…a
feeling of rightness….a clarity of vision….an above-ness. In one moment Clara
had been raised to these heady heights and she was calm, confident and self-assured.
The crowd was bound to follow her. A just cause in her right hand - human
decency in her left – she could neither stumble nor fall with these as her
supports.
“My boy is missing,” she began, and waited
for the sentence to sink in. The ripple of a murmur ran through the crowd. “He
has been kidnapped. Kidnapped by a woman called Isobel Watts.” She said this
last loudly and clearly, that from henceforth that name would be synonymous
with evil.
“Why? For a ransom, of course. But you know
all this. You know that she is demanding the release of her son from prison.
And you also know that the authorities have refused permission for this to
happen. So the authorities have as good as condemned my son to death.”
The crowd erupts and shouts of ‘yes’ and
‘disgraceful’ rise from the ranks.
“Are we asking for the release of a
dangerous murderer? NO! We are asking for the release of a sad transvestite who
had the audacity to refuse a freebie to a perverted police officer. For her
crime she was beaten, raped and thrown in jail….for more than thirty years.”
‘Shame on them,’ someone shouted and a
clamour of agreements rent the air. Clara waited for them to settle down again.
“Ladies and gentleman, friends and fellow
workers, we are not asking for the law to be broken…we are asking for justice
to be done….and at the same time to save my son.”
The crowd was now becoming agitated, backed
by a righteous cause, they were raring to go.
“There is no time to wait for the slow
wheels of due judicial process to turn in our favour. By then my son might be
dead. We have to act now. We have to take the law into our own hands. We have
to judge for ourselves. But,” she says, holding up her hand to still the rising
tide of consent that is battering her ears, “although we may be justified in
our actions…we are not justified in hurting anyone. This is very important. We
will lose the moral high ground if someone is hurt or…God forbid…killed. We are
merely demanding the release of Ronald Watts. And if they don’t comply, then we
will go in and fetch him ourselves.
“And there will be no need to threaten or
coerce any of the prison officials to let us in because….” and at this point
she held her hand high in the air, “I HAVE THE KEYS!” she said and jangled her
husband’s prison key-ring loudly for all to hear.
Clara and Alice marched down the high street
side by side, the townsfolk at their heels and triumph in the night air. Thunder
clouds battled up above as the storm began to develop. She felt like Boudica at
the head of an army, nearly a thousand strong by the time they reached the
prison. She wasn’t an insignificant, helpless nobody anymore. She had the whole
town behind her. She was an empowered mother crusading for the life of her son.
The mood was buoyant. For the first time since Joshua had fallen into a coma she
felt hopeful, confident. For the next ten blocks she walked on air, simply intent
on getting there. But as they came closer she began to wonder about things. Would
the Wardens let them through? Would the police try and stop them? And how? She
also wondered about this Transvestite. Would she even help them? How would she
feel when this crowd of people showed up at her door…and set her free? She
remembered a cautionary tale about a boy who set his pet Budgie free and the
poor thing died. It just couldn’t look after itself in the wild. Doubts began
to assail her now as they marched into the gathering gloom…all the things she
hadn’t thought through. What would she do when she had her…Ronald? She hadn’t
actually thought that far ahead. She couldn’t leave her at the City Limits motel
as originally planned. The old lady wouldn’t go near that place now that everybody
knew about it thanks to Alice. She could try and inform her through the
newspapers…get the old lady to contact her somehow. But what if the old lady didn’t
read the papers? She was beginning to think this wasn’t such a good idea. But
what else could she do? This man…woman, was her only link with Joshua.
Then she heard that strange, lonely piano
music again. She had dreamed about it last night. She had dreamed she had been
dancing with the Devil. ‘One step at a time,’ he had said, leading her down the
garden path. At the front gate was her husband, frozen in time, newspaper in
one hand, his keys in the other. Like a tree from which she was picking a fruit,
she took the keys from his hand and continued dancing down the street. ‘One
step at a time,’ the Devil said again, and the dream ended.
Maybe this is what he meant. Cross your
bridges when you get there. Just trust. It didn’t worry her that it was the
Devil’s advice she was following. She had no illusions about which camp she was
in. She didn’t care what this cost her, as long as she got her son back. She
was prepared to pay any price.
With a wave of her hand she brushed her
worries aside and strode out purposely towards the prison.
