CITIZENESS 66

    I suppose it was worth a try, but surely Number 2 didn’t think that the Prisoner would open to a woman, even one with a sob story! The Supervisor-Number 26 felt sure she was going to pull it off. Well they had barely got started, and using the maid to gain the reason behind the Prisoner’s resignation was only an opening gambit. After all the Prisoner had only been in The Village five minutes. And if it had worked, well Number 2 would have been showered in glory, and would have saved a great deal of time and effort. It really wasn’t the maid's fault, it was an important matter, and so the Prisoner had to be handled very differently. The maid played her part well enough, but if they thought a few tears would have any effect on him, well they misjudged him. Number 66 breaking down into tears told the Prisoner that they said they would let her go if only he would give her some sort of information. And that is the only chink in The Prisoner-Number 6’s armour, he can never resist a damsel in distress. Except Number 66 was no damsel in distress. In fact neither were Number 9 and Nadia Rakovsky, as for ‘B’ she seems far too resourceful. In fact as far as real damsels in distress go in The Village, there appears to have been only two. 73 who committed suicide, and Number 50, Monique the watchmaker's daughter. It could be said that Number 36 was in distress because all her weekly credit allowance had been used up, and so couldn’t buy a bag of sweets. But then 36 is of an age when she could no longer be called a “damsel!” Yet Number 6 did recognise her distressed state, and helped by buying her a bag of candy!
    The Prisoner-Number 6 soon saw off the maid 66, telling her that her services would not be required tomorrow. A maid service, Number 6 had a personal maid, two at times, one during the day and another who came to his cottage simply to make him his nightcap of hot chocolate. Pampered that’s what Number 6 was. If he had his own cleaning to do, laundry etc, he’d have had less time to think of escape, or to go poking his nose into business that did not concern him!

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