No One Wants You by Celine Roberts Read Free Book Online Page B

remember them all turning in my direction, to see the cause of the commotion. I was half dragged, half lifted up the courthouse stairs, by a vice-like grip on my upper arm, screaming and sobbing at the same time. I felt that I must be the worst living person in the whole world. I felt that I deserved any punishment that I was given. I thought, ‘Only the worst can happen to me now.’
    The grip was tightened on my arm, and I was lifted entirely off my feet, as we went inside the courthouse.
    ‘Will ya stop crying on me?’ shouted my attached cruelty officer, ‘You’ll come to no harm.’
    This was the first and only tiny inkling of reassurance that I was to receive from him. But there were many policemen in and around the courthouse, and all I could foresee at this time was a long period in jail. That was to be my punishment for the crime of being happy.
    I was hurriedly yanked back downstairs and out around the side of the courthouse. We entered again through a side doorway that turned out to be an office. Inside there were four policemen standing around a desk. Behind the desk was seated a man with a large book in front of him. I had never seen a book with such large pages before.
    The cruelty officer pointed to a vacant chair behind the man at the desk. He said, ‘Sit on that chair and do not move one inch and do not let me hear one sound from you. If you as much as move a muscle or squeak, the four policemen will arrest you, and put you in jail and throw away the key. Isn’t that right guard?’
    ‘That’s right,’ said one of the policemen, supporting the cruelty officer.
    I was left sitting in that chair for about four hours. I never moved a muscle or uttered a sound. I wanted to go to the toilet but dared not ask. Eventually I could not hold out any longer. I allowed the contents of my bladder to trickle silently down my leg, over the edge of the chair and away from me. I was terrified that somebody would notice.
    My cruelty officer had disappeared and the policemen were busily immersed in intense discussions with the man with the large book. As they talked about grievous bodily harm, public house licences, bicycles without lights, lorries without road tax, tractors without white lights, as well as drunk and disorderly conduct, none of them noticed a long thin stream of urine appear from under the desk and gently meander its way across the floor, out the office door. It escaped undetected and away to freedom.
    It must have been sometime in the afternoon when my cruelty officer reappeared back in the office. He came over to me and said, ‘Come on you, hurry up, you’re on shortly.’
    To be addressed in such a manner was a normal everyday occurrence for me, so I tried to hop down off the chair. As I had not moved a muscle for so long, the back of my bare legs felt as though they had been glued to the chair. When I stood up, the chair came with me. It was attached by dried sweat to the back of my legs. The back of the chair hit me between the shoulders and both the chair and I fell forward on to the ground. As I fell forward, I dislodged a pen and inkstand at the edge of the man’s desk. A large and heavy cut-glass inkwell, full of blue ink, fell on the cruelty officer’s nicely shined brown shoes and the bottom of his beige coloured trousers.
    He jumped two feet in the air with shock. It was as if somebody had poured sulphuric acid over his feet. ‘Me shoes are ruined and look at me trousers,’ he shouted.
    Two policemen and the man with the big book laughed heartily at the fate of the cruelty officer. ‘Awww, Aww come on lads,’ he moaned with outstretched arms, as if appealing to the policemen.
    This comic interlude had lightened their day considerably. For me, I thought this would surely see me consigned to jail for ever.
    When the commotion had died down, the ink-stained and embarrassed cruelty officer dragged me roughly out of the office and pinned me against the courthouse wall.
    I began to cry