Leaving the gyves and the chain which connected them under the diseased blanket, he got up and walked about his cell, exulting in his freedom. But only for a moment; although it was dark it wasn’t safe; he could hear the gaoler’s footsteps, perambulating outside; and although the gaoler must have heard many a sleepless prisoner pacing his cell, it wouldn’t do to awake suspicion. Rudy went back to bed (if the phrase is not too misleading) and after some effort, fixed on his handcuffs again. He waited for a while, to enjoy his sense of freedom; but when he realised that without his familiar bandages he wouldn’t sleep (let alone the danger of being found without them in the morning) he put them on again. How blessed can confinement be, once one is used to it!

Rudy had been used to it, at any rate resigned to it, until these irruptions of his daughter’s presence renewed his taste, not only for the taste of her bosom, of which, much as he relished it and felt the better for it, he was secretly ashamed, as for the free world outside these walls, where he could express himself as a man should and even order his own food!

Meanwhile he dared not take off his manacles, except in the privacy (the only privacy he had) of his bed, and didn’t know what to do with his new-found freedom.

The next time Angela came she was dressed to kill. Even Rudy who like many men (and many women, for that matter) could hardly believe that a relation so close to him as a child, could be outstandingly beautiful. Trudi was a good-looking woman; Rudy as he had cause to know, was or had been, a fine figure of a man. But that between them they should have begotten this wonderful-looking creature! For almost the first time in his life Rudy had a sense of physical inferiority. Other kinds of inferiority he had often felt: social inferiority, financial inferiority, mental inferiority; but physical inferiority, no. With his clothes on, or without them, he had always been as good as, or better than, the next man.

And then to have sired this worshipful creature!

‘A poor thing, but mine own.’ Rudy didn’t know the quotation, but he had the humility to feel, just as an equal, perhaps greater, number of people have not, that a home-made product is less to be esteemed in the eyes of the world than a shop-made product which has had the advantage of advertisement and public acclaim. Angela had neither: she was just the daughter of him and Trudi, and the idea that she had looks to attract general attention, such as a film-star might have, had never occurred to him.

Yet why had the gaoler given her and him these special privileges, for today no time-limit had been set on their intercourse?

Something moved in Rudy’s mind, and when their lunch(?), tea(?), dinner(?) was over, he wiped his mouth with his weekly handkerchief, and said, and meant it, ‘I am so grateful to you, darling.’ He stopped, shocked and astonished at this verbal expression of emotion, which he had perhaps remembered from some film. ‘What I mean is,’ he amended, ‘it is good of you to come and see your old dad, who isn’t like what he used to be.’

He glanced at himself, as much as he could see; the famous muscles were there, especially the bunch of deltoid like a cricketball on his right shoulder, of which he used to be proud, and which was the more in evidence now that his flesh had receded from it. ‘You’ve been kind to me, Angela,’ he ended lamely, ‘and so has Trudi, though I don’t want her to know, as I told you, where I am. I don’t know how you found out, for that matter.’

He didn’t expect an answer, but he suddenly felt a slip of paper in his hand, and a flood of light dawned on him.

‘Eat it, and when he fetches me, hit him as hard as you can.’

They looked at each other. Rudy swallowed the paper and realised what a woman, whose beauty was taken for granted by him and many others, might mean to a sex-starved prison-warder.

It explained a lot; it explained why Angela had been admitted to his cell, more often than other visitors would have been. It explained why their times together had been prolonged beyond the statutory limit. It explained—

Rudy put on his jacket to cover his nakedness, or semi-nakedness, for he still had his trousers, and his shoes, the white gymshoes he wore for exercise.

‘Do I look all right?’ he asked, buttoning up his jacket.

It was then he remembered his handcuffs. He was still wearing them, the chain between them sagged over his thighs. Many times since he had learned how to unloose them he had practised the art, and the art remained. With his hands on his knees, the chain between them, he looked like a prisoner in irons, but he could release himself at any moment.

‘Do I look all right?’ he repeated.

‘Of course, dear Father, you always look all right.’

As the sound of the warder’s footsteps, between their five minutes’ interval, died away, he gave his daughter a meaning look and twitched his shrunken wrists and claw-thin fingers which the handcuffs no longer held.

Their eyes met: she understood what he meant.

Rudy pulled down the sleeves of his worn-out jacket; he thought of the days when it had served him in awkward moments; reinforced by his daughter’s physical help, his being knew what to do in case of a fight. He had had many fights in his day; he knew where to plant the blows, he knew where the pressure-points were—under the elbow, behind the shoulders, in the groin, and he memorised them, while he and Angela were talking.

‘Time for you to go, Madam,’ said the gaoler, opening the door.

Rudy didn’t wait. At the sound of the gaoler’s footsteps nearing stealthily, he had unleashed his hands, and the gaoler, taken utterly by surprise, was lying sprawled, his face hidden by his crash-helmet, motionless, his eyes adrift, on the stone floor.

‘Follow me,’ said Angela.

Rudy followed her through devious ways where no one challenged them, for every prison has its times off, to a small door beyond which stood a car. Angela’s car. They got in and drove away.

Rudy fell asleep; but waking up he asked, not knowing where, or even who he was,

‘How did you know the way?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ she said accelerating. ‘I’ve been that way before, more than once.’

Her tone told him something, but not everything; and trying to solve the puzzle, he dropped off to sleep again.

For most of the time Rudy was asleep; he woke up when he saw lights flashing, then he dropped off again.

After a few hours they stopped abruptly, and Rudy, waking from his half-dream, said ‘Where are we?’

‘At the frontier,’ Angela replied. ‘It’s quite all right, Father, I’ve got your passport, the bearded one,’ she laughed, ‘which looks quite like you, at least as you used to be.’

Rudy could hardly take in what she was saying, but the customs official seemed satisfied. Rudy, lurching, opening and closing his eyes, couldn’t take in what was happening.

Then they were off again, for an hour or more, and it was dark before they arrived.

Angela had to help him out of the car for he wasn’t steady on his feet, and didn’t know which door to get out of, hers or his, or how to open it.

‘Where are we?’ he asked.

‘Oh, a long way away,’ she answered, still carefully lending him her arm. ‘They won’t find us here. Besides, it’s another country. Don’t you remember the customs?’

Dimly he did, but though his eyes kept closing, he still remembered, subconsciously, the dangers attaching to a life like his, and the dangers they might involve for other people.

‘Is this your house?’ he asked, still accepting her aid towards the unlighted windows.

‘And will your husband—I can’t remember his name—mind? And you have the baby—He spoke as if the baby might mind, too.

‘Oh no, the baby is quite happy. He’s asleep now, at least I hope so. And Jacko knows all about it (now). He isn’t here at the moment, but he’s in sympathy with you, otherwise I couldn’t have done—well, what I did do.’