ALBERT’S DREADFUL LIFE

If life is dealt from a pack of cards, then Albert's was dealt from the bottom of the pack.

Albert really thought that everything was over for him, and in a way he was looking forward to dying. It would be an adventure, he was quite certain of that, though he was wise enough to know that the adventure might possibly only last for a micro second. That might seem sad, but to him it was the beginning of everything, because so far in his life he’d had practically nothing.

He’d been born in prison. That was because his mother wasn’t a very good person. In fact he’d discovered through fascinated research later on that she was particularly evil. She’d had two children before he was born, and strangled them both because they cried at night and woke her up, though that wasn’t so bad unless she was in bed with a punter when it was most off-putting.

So Albert’s first few weeks of life were being nestled up to the breast of a woman near the start of her life sentence, and Authority in its wisdom had decided he ought to be fostered by a loving family, one that could give him a start in life.

But Authority wasn’t so good at choosing a future for him because they chose Sandra and Eustace Jenkins, both of whom might best be described as short-tempered and more honestly as cruel. Sandra delighted in scalding poor little Albert in water too hot for his delicate skin, but only in tiny patches that would pass unnoticed if he was given a medical examination, whilst Eustace enjoyed pinching him between rather spiteful fingers until he howled. The net result of this was by the end of his first year of life he was psychologically scarred for good and a mass of bruises to boot.

He was examined, of course, by Doctor Grout who decided that as something was very wrong with the care of the boy, and he reported it to the aforementioned Authority, who decided that the baby boy couldn’t be anything but evil for anyone to abuse his the Jenkins couple had, a conclusion reached by examining a rare collection of bruises and scars and even evidence of fractured bones, injuries that could only have been inflicted on him if he himself was evil. It was all a long time ago and I suppose that people were more prone to rash judgements back then.

So he was incarcerated in an orphanage, Saint Lovely Home for Unwanted Waifs, that had as its driving force the creation of perfect human beings, an achievement that was created by the judicious use of such kindly implements as bamboo canes and size twelve slippers. But this orphanage had little experience with babies of Albert’s age and, although his life was a misery in that establishment, it was not as bad as the lives of older boys who to a beating heart donated their lives to making sure they weren’t the ones bullied if something went wrong, like a pencil needing sharpening or a chunk of inedible gristle not properly chewed, and blamed Albert. And there was Josie. A girl, though he had little experience of girls, but she tried to look after him in the way one child might look after another.

Albert lived in the Saint Lovely Home for Unwanted Waifs until Authority put its feelers out, closed said establishment on account of too many bloodstains on too many beds and anyway there was a war on and the staff were needed as nurses to dress the sores on wounded soldiers. And by then Albert was ten and sent to a Welsh mining village to live with a gentleman who cared for sheep and who was far too old to be obliged to do military service even though he wanted to. Dai Jones (that was his name) decided the boy would make an excellent substitute for his favourite sheep when he felt the need for someone to love, and this marked, though truly unpleasant, the nicest art of Albert’s life so far because Dai was too old to feel the need for affection very often.

Albert was seventeen when he was convicted of a crime and sent to prison. Having been in a variety of caring establishments until he was let out alone into the world he hadn’t been aware that he was doing anything wrong. It was the late nineteen forties, he was hungry and a woman was throwing crusts of stale bread into the village pond in order to feed some swans. But Albert was hungry, probably more so than the swans in question, and he fished a chunk of bread, not caring that it was turning green with mould, out of the water. The woman howled her indignation, a policeman was sent for and somehow he was arraigned before a magistrate and found guilty of theft.

I mean, for a crust of rotten bread!

Prison was a delightful experience. He wasn’t in the place for long, just a matter of days, but during those days he was fed reasonably well, incarcerated with others who tended to want to take care of him because of his inherent weakness and relative youth. When he emerged from jail he had a greater awareness of his own importance to himself. He must do everything he could to get back into the safety of a jail cell.

It wasn’t until he spent some time with a truly unpleasant tramp, Benjy Johnson, an unwashed and much scarred old man without a single redeeming characteristic, that he saw the man he himself was slowly becoming. And when he discussed their common problems with Benjy he saw for the first time that he had been dealt an unfair hand when it came to the lives of his fellow man. Benjy and himself were lower than the bottom rung in society. And they would stay there until they did something about it for themselves. Benjy scorned him, in his broken voice trying to assure Albert that this life was their life and all they need ever expect.

He knew Benjy was wrong, and in a fit of anger he murdered him for being wrong.

He was soon caught, and jailed, this time, he was told, for life, and the familiar rattle of keys in locks and doors slamming, told its own story.

Twenty years later he was released from prison on licence. But in prison he had managed to equip himself with some kind of education. And that education had shown him exactly where his life had gone wrong because the actual truth was he had been born the son of a murderess. He was a prisoner himself when he manage to get hold of snippets of information that slowly drew a picture he didn’t like. One of his sources was a fellow inmate and it had been he who had spent as much time as he could with the woman who was convicted of killing her own babies before she was locked away.

At first Albert believed that a circle had been completed and he had reached a point in it that was diametrically opposite the start, and he resolved that, as soon as he could, he would end his own life. He was on low doses of medication for a gastric problem, and he started hoarding the medicine rather than take it. He was going to do the right thing now that the circle was complete, and take the miserable creature that he’d become out of circulation for good. Now in his middle years and totally unequipped for life in the big wide world, he was dressed in the clothes he had worn when he had entered the prison and shown an open door that led out into the world.

The sun was shining. Everything felt warm.

In a pocket and in a screwed up sheet of lavatory paper he treasured his hoarded supply of medicine.

“Hello my love,” said a voice as he stood by the open prison gate and looked around, confused, not knowing which way he should go and why he should go there when he finally chose.

Someone had called someone my love.

“You don’t know me, my love, but I know you,” said the voice, and he looked round.

It was a woman. Probably about his age, and almost certainly probably from a very different walk in life, but she was looking straight at him. She looked clean, she was dressed in clothes that hadn’t been in a locker for almost half a century so didn’t smell musty and fusty and stale.

“Come on, Albert,” she said, “I’ll take you home.”

She knows my name!

“But who…” he stammered.

“You knew me once,” she said, “in the home we both said we hated, the two of us. Remember the Saint Lovely Home for Unwanted Waifs? I was your friend and I’m taking you home right now to be your friend again.”

“But I was going to die,” he stammered, “I really wanted to. I was looking forwards to ending it all, the nastiness of everything, the cruelties of life...”

“Don’t be silly,” she said with a huge smile and a small giggle, “I’m going to mend you. I really am.”

And that was what she did, and twenty years later, after he had learned to be loved and then to actually love another person himself, and by then an old man in his eighties, he had a dream one night. It was death, and he never woke up.

© Peter Rogerson 17.03.23