‘Fetch one of those baskets and come with me.’
Jonesy lifts the heaving basket filled with brushes and follows Mr Moonlight down the corridor.
Finn is occupied with sweeping and clearing away the day’s mess. He pauses for a moment, places his hand to his throat and lightly massages the ring where the noose strangled him. He pushes the broom over to the door and peers down the dim hallway. The gas jets spit flames that swallow Jonesy’s shadow.
Mr Moonlight strides slowly to a cell at the centre of the ward that has been converted to a storeroom to accommodate extra space for the infirmary’s necessaries. He turns and motions for Jonesy to follow him into the cell.
‘Place the basket here, 1091,’ he says rather loudly, as if he wishes all to hear.
Jonesy does as he is told.
‘Now to fetch another.’
The warder conducts a pattern of fetch, carry and deliver. He says or does nothing untoward, yet he never takes his eyes off Jonesy. This would be normal behaviour of any warder, Jonesy thinks, if not for the particular way the warder’s gaze follows him. They do not speak or vary the ritual.
The warder also asks Finn to carry the baskets occasionally and so establishes such normality along the corridor that no one notices anything unusual when Mr Moonlight and Jonesy are occupied in the storeroom for a few minutes longer than usual.
It is the night before Christmas Eve. Jonesy follows the warder to the storeroom as he normally does and places the basket in the corner, to be collected in the morning. As he turns to go, Mr Moonlight grabs Jonesy’s wrist, holding him back. He places his finger to his lips, signalling Jonesy to be silent. Then he closes the cell door leaving it unlocked.
Jonesy feels his knees weakening in a terrifying moment of uncertainty. The two are surrounded by rows of sheets, towels, pieces of soap and the finished wooden brushes that Jonesy has carved. The warder leans against a shelf of bath bricks, grabs Jonesy’s wrist and pulls him closer. Jonesy is alarmed. What if he is contagious? If the sleeping sickness should pass on to the warder?
Mr Moonlight’s finger is neither soft nor rough as it traces Jonesy’s lips, which are parted and full of the warm breath of expectancy. His grandmother once told him that his mouth is shaped like a large plum, so ripe and swollen that it would one day fill a person with a great desire to bite it.
Jonesy wants to touch the man’s face in return and reaches to stroke his pale skin, but Mr Moonlight’s arm swiftly swats his hand away. ‘No,’ he says forcefully, with a silent frown. Just as quickly, he unbuttons his uniform trousers and guides Jonesy’s hand down to his erection.
Mr Moonlight keeps his eyes trained on the door; the danger is both exciting and terrifying. They not only break the rules – they break the law.
He holds Jonesy’s head with both of his hands and pushes him down to his knees. He sticks two fingers in Jonesy’s mouth and when they’re wet, he traces Jonesy’s lips again with his own spit before he prises Jonesy’s mouth open.
A different blond man, the sailor from Limehouse, taught Jonesy how to suck and play, and he is only getting started when the warder thrusts, thrusts once more, and is spent.
They are in the corridor again. Only a few minutes have passed.
The following week, with the baskets of handles sitting in the corner, and his mouth achingly open, he pleasures Mr Moonlight in silence. The week after is the same, and from then on, once a week, on randomly chosen days, Jonesy can expect to be at the service of a callous young man whose capacity for excitement is thankfully short.
Today, Jonesy sands the wooden brush handles to the rhythm of his master’s regrets, which Finn constantly proclaims. While his master speaks on and on, Jonesy considers the differences between whoredom and freedom. He knows enough about the former through his father’s pitiful rendition of a brothel. So in his limited experience he concludes that Mr Moonlight most definitely treats him like a whore; not once has the man offered anything in return. This, his grandmother would say, is dog treatment. Jonesy concludes, too, that he will surely lose more than his freedom if he is caught. Punishment sees him dead at the end of a rope.
Jonesy stops carving, his knife suspended mid-air. On my ancestors. I forgot. I cannot die, he thinks. He glances at the marks on his master’s neck. London will forget one miracle, but not two. Another man dangling from a rope, a sod at that, an invert … There. I’ve said it. Even if only to myself. The weight of being found out is more frightening than death itself.
That night in the storeroom, once a retreat of intrigue where he had hoped that Mr Moonlight would touch his face and kiss his mouth, the shelves and crude necessities of prison life oppress him. Before he places the basket in the corner, Mr Moonlight’s buttons are already unfastened and the bulge in his flannel throbs warm when Jonesy’s hand is forced. He takes his hand away and shakes his head. The warder looks confused for a moment, then he angrily tries to force Jonesy down to his knees. When Jonesy plants his feet and resists, Mr Moonight strikes him. He uses the back of his hand, the way Jonesy’s father used to do. The pain to the side of his face is not as frightening as the look of disgust in the warder’s eyes.
It is time they leave, or their absence will be noticed.
‘Jonesy. What the hell?’ Finn’s blood boils when he sees the imprint of the warder’s hand on his face.
‘Please. I beg you. Say nothing.’
Five more times Jonesy is subjected to Mr Moonlight’s violent hand, until the day the warder disappears. It is said that he took a position at another prison, but the
