A few of the women crowd under the little window, extending their hands and calling out pleadingly to passers-by. You watch them do this for hours, wondering why they bother to keep at it – until, just before dusk, a passer-by throws the tail end of a loaf of bread down through the hole. A broad, blonde woman catches it, then fights off the others with one hand as she shoves the food into her mouth with the other, chewing and swallowing as fast as she can, even as her hair’s being yanked by one of the others.
As darkness falls, the prison guard drops a single scoop of watery slop into a bowl for you. You eat it quickly, but there’s still a gnawing hole in your belly. So that’s how you get by in here, you think. Those who are tough enough to stand at the window the longest, and fight the hardest, get something extra.
I can do that, you think, a little flame of hope lighting inside you. And I’ll be lucky tomorrow – I know I will.
ANKLES. ALL THE next morning, you watch ankles and feet passing by the window. Your eyes follow them as keenly as a dog on a scent: leather shoes, some broad and black, some dainty and tan, plodding and tapping. When you stand right under the window and look up, you can see people’s faces, too.
‘Milady!’ you shout as a parasol swings by.
‘Please, sir!’ you call to a man in black who’s stopped to check his watch.
Plenty of them look wealthy enough to spare you a coin or a crust, but none of them do.
Hours pass, and your arms ache from holding them up to the window. You can see why most of the prisoners don’t bother with this: it’s disheartening and exhausting. But just then, a middle-aged man in a cap and brown waistcoat passes by.
‘Here you go, love,’ he says kindly, and he tosses something down to you that flashes in midair and hits the stone rim of the window with a clink.
You snatch up the coin from the floor where it falls. Then you dart away and hold it tightly in your hand as the other women who were also at the window grab at you and yell.
‘Oi, you’ve only been here one day. Give it to me!’ shouts one, pummelling you. You manage to elbow her in the face, and she screams. She raises a hand to strike you when a shout from one of the other prisoners makes everyone run back to the window.
‘Men prisoners! They’re bringing a load in for sentencing!’
It’s hard to see past the crowd that’s formed under the window. ‘What’s going on?’ you ask a brown-haired girl standing beside you.
‘They’ve brought some men in from one of the other prisons, or the hulks maybe, to be taken to the Old Bailey next door for sentencing,’ she explains.
You plunge into the crowd and wriggle your way to the front to get a better look. A line of men comes up the street, being herded like tired sheep by guards with truncheons at the ready. Iron shackles on their wrists and ankles are linked to a long chain that clinks as they shuffle along. The women who are crowded around you at the window jostle to see the men better, and some of them cheer.
As you watch the line trudge past, your eyes scanning each exhausted, unfamiliar face with pity, suddenly a figure catches your eye – a tall, broad man with a ginger beard. Your heart stops. It’s him!
‘Da!’ you scream at the top of your voice. His head swings around, looking for the sound. ‘Da, down here! Da! Da!’
He sees you, and his mouth drops open in astonishment. He can barely walk in those chains, let alone break free, but he’s wrenching at them and lurching about with all his bodily strength anyway. He is trying to get closer to you, and he’s bending down to look at you better through the bars. The other prisoners chained to him are shouting, and shuffling towards you too, trying to help him get closer. Wardens come running down the street. Inside your cell, the women around you shove and cheer, hoisting you up closer to the hole.
‘It’s you!’ you hear Da shout above the din. ‘Oh, dear God, what’s happened to you, my love?’
You slip an arm out of the window, but he’s too far away to touch. He struggles to reach out to you, but his chains make it impossible. You start to cry.
The last time Da shouted to you like this, his voice full of tears and love, was as they dragged him away a year ago. Now, again, he is fighting to get back to you – gaunt and pale as a ghost, but his eyes shining like jewels.
‘Da!’ you manage to cry again through your tears.
‘Eyes to the ground!’ barks a warden outside, but the prisoners don’t comply: everyone is staring at the thirteen-year-old waif at the window with tears coursing down her cheeks, and her convict father struggling to reach her.
‘I said eyes to the ground!’ shouts the warden again. He cracks his truncheon into his palm as a warning, and all the men hastily look at their toes – except your da. He can’t tear his eyes from yours.
You don’t want to tell him about Ma, but he has to know. You manage to choke the words out, half sob, half shout: ‘Ma … she’s dead! The smallpox took her.’
‘You’ll be whipped for this!’ shouts the warden with the truncheon.
Da has crumpled in half with grief
