Five Encounters with Chrissie McCloud KN 6491
One Act Play by Jan Watts
Scene One - HMP BROCKHILL 2004
Jenny So, let’s recap. The idea is that I come with a crew to visit you every four years and we have a chat. You will have your back to the camera and…
Chrissie No one will know who I am?
Jenny Well, that’s up to you, really. Some of the interviewees want to keep their anonymity and others want to be famous.
Chrissie Well, everyone one wants to be a celebrity – whatever that means. Everyone wants to be a celebrity – whatever the cost.
Jenny Do you want to be a celebrity?
Chrissie I wouldn’t mind if me mum were dead. But not yet, not now. Not while she still has neighbours.
Jenny Right. We’ll film you with your back to the camera.
Chrissie No, her neighbours know all about me anyway. Let’s give them a laugh and anyway, I went to the saloon today and Karen demonstrated chestnut highlights on me. What do you think?
Jenny Lovely and it’s a nice cut.
Chrissie I don’t want to waste it. I’ll face the camera.
Jenny Very good. Have you got any questions for me?
Chrissie When does it stop?
Jenny What do you mean?
Chrissie I mean, when does it stop? How many years? And will it always be you?
Jenny There’s a commitment from Docuprod, the production company for five programmes – one now in 2004 – and others in 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. Each programme will have edited highlights from the previous shows – a bit like ‘Seven Up’ – you remember the one that followed seven children into adulthood. (Chrissie looks puzzled.) Well, that was with kids growing up and this is with people who have broken the law.
Chrissie And will it always be you?
Jenny Well, I hope so. I’d like to think it will be me, but….
Chrissie Yeh?
Jenny I can’t promise, can I?
Chrissie And I can’t promise to be here in 2020 either. The way I feel now, I’m unlikely to reach lunchtime. (Pause.) Let’s start now or I’ll miss lunch and today is chip day.
Jenny O.K. (Nods to cameraman. Pause. Looks towards the camera. ) Hello Chrissie – can you tell us why you are here?
Chrissie Aren’t you going to introduce me properly and tell people who I am?
Jenny It’ll be down as a voice-over. We’ve already got some footage of the gate and a close-up of the sign, HMP Brockhill. Charlie filmed an officer walking down the corridor and opening the gate with the keys. So, the bits around our interview are already done. So, can you tell us why you are here?
Chrissie I’m here for copying CDs and then selling them on the Internet.
Jenny How long will you be here?
Chrissie I don’t know.
Jenny Oh!
Chrissie No, I don’t know. I’ve been convicted, but not sentenced yet. I’m to be sentenced next month and then they’ll move me.
Jenny Really?
Chrissie Oh yeh, I can’t stay here, because it’s only for remand and for those who are awaiting sentencing. It’s a shame, cos me mum can bring the kids to see me here. It takes all day, though. She has to get the number 45 to Kings Norton Station, then the train to Redditch and then wait for hours for the mini-bus out into the wilds here. Takes her two hours with the wind in the right direction and it would be half and hour in a car. But that’s good, cos when I get to Peterborough…
Jenny Peterborough?
Chrissie Yeh, Peterborough. HMP Peterborough is probably where I’ll go. They’re sending loads of cons there now. The chances of me seeing the kids then is…..
Jenny So tell me about your …
Chrissie My crime. Go on, say it.
Jenny O.K. Tell me about your crime and why you did it?
Chrissie Well, there’s me and the girls at home – Martina, Daniela and Georgia. And then we sometimes see him.
Jenny Him?
Chrissie Yeh him. He works in sales. Hubcaps.
Jenny Oh yeh, hubcaps.
Chrissie No, honestly, he’s legit. He doesn’t nick them. Believe me. I know you can’t believe anything anyone tells you here, because they are all liars, but he’s straight. Straight in everyway. He sells hubcaps for a firm that makes them. He’s not a crook. He’s not like….
Jenny But he’s away a lot.
Chrissie Yes, never home. I’m a lone parent as close as dammit. Never see him. Comes home – give him a good feed, a bit of rumpy-pumpy (so he doesn’t look elsewhere), wash his shirts and undies, press his suit and he’s off again.
Jenny Right.
Chrissie And all for peanuts.
Jenny So money troubles?
Chrissie Well, he’s not a good salesman, is he?
Jenny O.K. So you were a bit short…
Chrissie You’re telling me. So I decided on a life of crime.
Jenny You did?
Chrissie Of course not. No, but now I wish I’d robbed a bank. All this fuss about selling some CDs on ebay….I wish I’d put a pair of tights on my head and a carrot in my pocket.
Jenny A carrot in your pocket?
Chrissie Yeh, that’s what (Buzzer for the name) did. (She stands up and pretends to take off a pair of tights and acts out the bank scene as though she is the bank robber.) She put her tight in her pocket with a string bag and a carrot. She walks into an empty HSBC and tries to lock the door. It’s impossible, because it’s an automatic door and when she gets close to it, it opens. Then she goes and tries to hide herself by the cash machine, while she puts the tights on her face (She puts the imaginary tights over her head and makes a grotesque face.) Puts the carrot in the pocket of her sweat pants and makes a gun shape…like this (She makes a gun shape in her pocket.) – see? And then she goes up to the cashier and says in a deep voice, cos she’s a man – ‘fill this up with readies!’ Well, she has trouble pushing the string bag through the little hole in the window with her left hand, so she takes her right hand out of her pocket, puts her carrot down and uses both hands. Well, it’s all over then. (She puts out her wrists as if they are going to be cuffed.)
Jenny So you wish you’d done that rather than…
Chrissie Yeh, well I would have pushed through an A4 envelope and kept my carrot in my pocket.
Jenny Tell me about what you did.
Chrissie I didn’t realise I was breaking the law.
Jenny Really?
Chrissie Well, you don’t think, do you? They all wanted winter boot. So, I bought a job lot of blank CDs from Currys. Yes, I bought, never nicked. And I spent an evening pressing a few copies and flogging them on ebay. (Looks at Jenny.) Bet you’ve knocked off a few copies too, in your time.
Jenny No, not me. Remember, I work in the media. You’ll get no sympathy from me. What did you copy?
Chrissie My speciality was Michael Jackson.
Jenny Well, Michael should have his royalties for his work.
Chrissie Yeh, well, I sold a lot of Michael Jackson, because he’s a bit of a guilty pleasure, isn’t he? You want to listen to him, but you don’t want to pay much and you certainly don’t want him to have the money.
Jenny It is theft.
Chrissie It is paedophilia. He should be in a cell, not me.
Jenny Anyway, you wre arrested and ….
Chrissie …and they put me on remand here.
Jenny Away from your children,
Chrissie Well, everyone in here is a mother. Yeh, they kept on saying they wouldn’t put on remand. (In a serious voice.) ‘Don’t worry, you’ve got children, they won’t put you in jail. You don’t pose a threat to the community. It’ll be probation’.
Jenny But it wasn’t.
Chrissie They were wrong. Wanted to make an example. Stop other people. Ebay was the mistake I made. I should have kept to car boot sales.
Jenny So how is it here?
Chrissie Well, after the first week or so when you come in and you’re on D wing with all the girls who are as high as kites, it’s O.K. I’m on A wing now. It’s s’posed to be drug-free. Well. I thought it was all s’posed to be drug-free. It is prison – right? But everywhere is of course full of druggies. After a bit, they get some methadone and they get better. Some get completely clean in here, They are nice girls generally and the older ones do want to get off it. There are quite a few nutters in here. Most of them are harmless – but they all be in hospital, not prison, So much for care in the community…. (A buzz instead of a name) in the pad next to me – well, for her it’s home. It’s the first time in her life that she’s had three meals a day, a room of her own and clean laundry. She finds it hard to get up in the morning, being a ‘lady of the night’ to feed her drug habit. But we all find it hard to get up in the morning….
Jenny So what are you doing to keep yourself occupied in here?
Chrissie Well, I’m in Education most of the time. I’m in the saloon, doing hairdressing. You have to go through a few hoops to get on that course, because they have to be able to trust you with scissors.
Jenny Trust you?
Chrissie Lots of girls cut themselves in here.
Jenny Right.
Chrissie And I’m doing my ECDL.
Jenny What’s that?
Chrissie ECDL – European Computer Driving Licence – of course with my experience of ebay, I should be running the course.
Jenny So it’s O.K. in here?
Chrissie Yeh, of course I miss the girls and even hubcap man a bit. Though, if you want abit of the other, there’s lots on offer in here. Lots of the girls aren’t really lessies, not on the out, but in here, they get satisfaction from each other, if you know what I mean. Yes, it’s like a well-run girls’ boarding school – education, regular routine, library books, locked doors and a little bit of the other on the side, if that’s what you want, without the penises.
Jenny O.K.
(Chrissie stands up to go.)
Chrissie Well, that’s it. Your time is up.
Jenny No bell.
Chrissie A bell in here means there’s trouble. You should see the screws move. No, I can hear movement. I’ll need to be off. It is chips today.
Jenny So see you in four years time. You’ll be out by then with a new life outside.
Chrissie I should bloody hope so. Once bitten….have you got a cigarette?
Jenny No, I don’t smoke. I didn’t know you smoked.
Chrissie I don’t, but a burn is currency in here.
(Blackout.)
