Boy A

by Jonathan Trigell

  There’s a new act on stage. The waiter is handing out balloons to the audience. He takes one, a red one, blows it up as others are doing. He’s surprised at the ease with which he knots it, an act that he remembers as fiddly, irritating. He sits the balloon in a clean glass ashtray, beside him on the bar. It wears it like a crown, but upside-down. There is a murmur from the crowd as the girl, younger this time, produces a fistful of darts and a short blowpipe. He’s seen the act before, but doesn’t suppose that many of the audience are surprised at where she places it. She’s naked, but for a pair of gym shoes, her perky little breasts poke towards the roof, as she positions herself in a crab. She has to do it one-handed, so she can direct the blowpipe. He can see why she wears trainers. She’s a good shot. The accuracy alone would be worth watching. The first balloon explodes into a damp rubber rag, and the audience bursts into applause. She edges herself around, pivoting on her one hand, while she reloads the blowpipe from the small pile of darts beside her. Occasionally she misses, but more often she pops at the first go. Until only his balloon remains. He’s the finale, the furthest from her. He sees her swing her hips towards him, in a posture which should be stirring, but isn’t, because what she’s doing is so absurd. He lifts the balloon from the ashtray. Play by the rules if you play – and holds it out by its navel stub. Her expression doesn’t change as she fires. It is as blank and beautiful as a doll’s. And he is left holding the shell of what he once had.

  Before he asked her to marry him they had spent the day building sand castles. Until they’d made what was more like a sand town, a sand land. She told him about all the people who lived in it, which house belonged to whom. Which was the baker’s, and where the mayor lived; and she built a sand barracks for the soldiers, who were to line the ditches and the walls to fight the tide. At the top was a house she said belonged to them. It wasn’t the nicest or the grandest, because she said she didn’t want that. It was the furthest from the sea. It was the safest. But eventually, while they sat and watched, it sank too.

  T is for Time.

  Teacher and Trainers.

  In time A and Hacendado discovered that their lives rhymed: both their fathers were abroad and their mothers dead.

  Hacendado’s dad was Spanish, hence the name, but he had three older sisters who often visited.

  ‘I miss girls,’ he’d tell A. ‘It’s not just about sex, I miss the softness, the laughter. You can’t get that from a picture.’

  Their pad was filled with pictures. Every wall a collage of cuttings expertly attached with toothpaste. Hacendado was the wing porn baron, which was to say that he had six magazines he rented by the night, with surcharge for stain or damage. He wouldn’t put those glossy pages up, though, and not just to save his goods. The pictures on the wall were more concealing, selected to tantalize a little, but not to torture.

  ‘Don’t make it harder than it has to be,’ was his motto, and he applied it to every aspect of his prison life. He taught A to try and take a zest in each little decision. Which radio station to listen to, what card game to play. He showed him that to stay sane you had to keep control over everything you could. Forget about the big choices you don’t have, concentrate on the minutiae which are yours.

  Hacendado was respected on the wing, not through fear, though he made it clear he would fight for what was his. But because he was a fixer, a hoarder, a helper. He had what others wanted. He didn’t get dirty with drugs, where competition and robbery was rife, but stuck to sex-mags, sanitation and snacks. A was always happy to pool his slim weekly resources, to buy in to some scheme or other. Not only because of the profit share he would receive, but because it involved him in a venture. It was something to do. And it increased his bond with his pad-mate.

  Hacendado never asked much about A’s life. It was another of his rules not to pry. And A was grateful, because it kept his lies small and straight, like his new teeth.

  The dentist delivered. One of the offices was kitted out as his surgery. He was moustached, methodical and humane. He stood out in Feltham like a stick of chalk in a bag of maggots. By the time he came, A’s face was long healed. So all that was left of near death was a one-inch gap that sucked air when he spoke. The dentist made a cast of the hole, and returned a month later with an insert. It fitted so perfectly that it might have stayed sat inside, even without his skill with cement and drills.

  A could not believe the brief view in the dentist’s portable porthole mirror. But he had to wait until it went dark before he could properly examine his new mouth, in the reflection of the cell window. And there, with voices shouting the nightly flush of threat and shit, he realized he was changed. Not least because the voices couldn’t touch him.

  Not so long ago they had. The first night on Kestrel wing he’d been terrified after someone threatened to fuck him up. He hadn’t believed Hacendado’s claim that most menace came to nothing, having just been beaten to a pulp by a man whose warnings the warders hadn’t taken seriously. Then on the way to tea, he was punched from behind, at the base of the spine.

  ‘You don’t shut your window till I say so,’ the voice from before had said. ‘I just wanted to hear you sing last night, now I want an eighth of snout. Or I’m gonna make your face look even more like road-kill.’ The guy pulled around him and walked off down the stairway. He wasn’t that much bigger than A, but he had two groupies loping behind him.

  ‘Now what do I do?’ A asked his pad-mate.

  ‘Probably you pay up,’ Hacendado said. ‘I’ll get you the baccy, on a strict loan basis.’ He turned to A, eyes stressing the seriousness of his words. ‘But you don’t just give it to him, you make sure it’s the hardest day’s work the fuck’s ever done, then he’ll find someone easier to pick on the next time. You don’t have to win in here, but you have to fight.’ He laughed. ‘Maybe you’re better off getting a battle out of the way while you’re still mashed up, save you getting damaged twice.’

  A hadn’t laughed. But later he’d concentrated, as Hacendado expounded moves. Learning how to fight up close, so his opponent wouldn’t be able to land blows on his busted face. He shadow-boxed shin stamps, knee and elbow smashes, ear twists and eye gouges. He locked his hands together, behind a ghostly neck, and head-butted until adrenalin streamed and he almost ached for a fight to come. Almost. He knew his best chance was what his PO had told him: to keep his head down, walk away from trouble. But there’s nowhere to walk away to in prison. Everything comes back sooner or later.

  The guy came for the baccy one association time, when Hacendado was out striking a deal. A told him he didn’t have it, though he could feel it bulge in his sock. The guy said he wanted it by dinner, or he’d bring his mates and break him up.

  Trembling, A had started to reach for his sock. But then a cold clarity came over him, spread around him like a ring of taunting children. He stood up and said: ‘Fuck yourself.’

  Neither of them was really winning, when Hacendado came back. They were both bleeding. Hacendado pulled the guy from A’s lock, and flung him out the cell door. He landed on the landing, sprawled against the rails. Sneered, as he wiped the blood from his nose on his sweatshirt sleeve, but walked off without looking back in.

  ‘Yeah,’ Hacendado said, thoughtfully. ‘I reckon that’ll do the trick.’

  A wasn’t troubled by the guy again. Sometimes he got a nod or a grin from him when they crossed paths. And he’d grin back with his new teeth.

  Terry came after six months. Six months of forms signed and countersigned, winding like white eels around the country. A was freaked out for three days before the visit. Just like Hacendado said he would be. He was jumpy, pacy, couldn’t settle down to play shit-head or pontoon. Stared out of the window instead, trying to see something of the world that was coming in to see him.

  Terry said that A looked well, and he supposed he did. Terry seemed healthy himself, brown, though he said he hadn’t been away. Just brown against the pallid indoor faces all the white guys inside wore. They
talked about old times, which were not so long ago, in the way that people generally do, which is to forget the periods of pain. The chat blended in all around them, swirling together like the twenty brands of cigarette smoke that filled the room. A room already full, with mothers, girlfriends and kids. Few fathers, as most must have taken Terry to be, if they’d cared enough to notice. He had to be family, they would have said: by the way the two hugged when their time had elapsed; since there were tears in his eyes, as he made a sign to the boy to keep his chin up; because, as they filed their separate ways, the two waved in a manner that insisted they were tied by a deeper thing, a past that glued them, that collective stick-together sense that you only get in families. Or those who’ve shared other catastrophes.

  When A was returned to the cell, Hacendado was once more admiring his soaps. He had his radio tuned to a pirate hip-hop station. He was told to turn it down, before the screw escorting A locked them in again. After he’d turned the volume back up, Hacendado started to clean his shoes, white Reeboks. Using a rag he meticulously massaged every crevice, although they didn’t look like they had a spec of dirt on them anyway.

  ‘You want to get some trainers sent in, now you’ve got a visitor,’ he told A. ‘Only gypos wear them prison issue shoes.’

  A nodded, not sure how he could broach such a subject with Terry. Or if to do so would be abusing his kindness. Taking berties.

  The Milton Keynes Organised Berties, MKOBs, ran Feltham. Less than the screws maybe, but more than the governors, who changed sometimes twice a year. STABS, St Albans Bastard Squad, had made a play that left two of their members chevvied. Slashed with razor blades melted into a toothbrush. Their leader was PP-nined. When A first heard this phrase he thought PP-9 was a form, a complaint or a transfer, or some other from the ream of arbitrary numbers that the screws bandied about. In fact a PP-9 is a radio battery, the largest allowed inside. A cylinder related to power only in terms of struggle, when swung within a sock.

  It was in the shower that the STABS’ director took his PP-9. Unaware, from behind. A blow that knocked him to his knees. Slid his redded face down the clean tile wall. And dumped him in the two inches of water that the faucet delivered faster than the plug could clear. The wet-armed attacker delivered one more blow, which made the naked body twitch. Then he strolled calmly out of the shower room.

  A watched from the stall opposite, and stood by the general view, that the youth had slipped, when the screws came to take him to hospital. What other reason could there be for the blood that still swirled in the shower tray, if no one had seen a thing?

  From then on A showered with his back to the wall. Not because he feared some soap-dropping come-on, of the sort that the boys in the secure home had nervously joked about. But because he wanted to see who was there. To know what approached. Since they were two, in a cell designed for one, he and Hacendado had devised a dignity-saving routine, where they’d try and schedule dumps for when the other went to get clean. But it meant he was always on his own in the shower room. Water washes away evidence, and confined in a stall and naked, there’s little defence to present. But A was getting tougher.

  They went to the gym most days, him and Hacendado. Whenever they were allowed their legal right to an hour’s exercise. A still felt puny beside most of the guys in there. He wouldn’t have kept going on his own. But, doing repetition-then-rest swaps with Hacendado, he was amazed at how quickly his strength grew.

  It didn’t feel like a wasted day when they’d been to the gym, because he was making himself bigger, harder, more resilient. He felt like he was preparing for what the world was going to drop next.

  The whole world was almost within reach at Feltham. Only miles from Heathrow. With the window open he could hear the gas-stove burn of the jets that scorched the air overhead. Taking people away, bringing new ones.

  Terry came one visit with a pair of new trainers. Like he’d read A’s mind. A pair of Puma Sunrise. Nothing special in the grand scheme of sneakers, but a million miles from pikey prison shoes.

  ‘It’s your birthday,’ Terry explained, ‘or at least it will be on Wednesday.’

  A had forgotten about its approach. A meaningless date, twinned with a made-up name. ‘They’re perfect,’ he told Terry. ‘How did you know?’ They were perfect, too, eggwhite with a yolk-yellow stripe.

  Terry just smiled.

  The trainers made the prison floors less hard underfoot. They were something to keep clean, to take pride in. When eventually constant wear took its toll, Terry bought another pair. It became instant tradition, and Puma Sunrise became Reebok Classic. Then the blue-striped Boks became Converse One Stars. The Cons were the same as the pair Kurt Cobain was wearing when he placed his mouth around a brace of twelve-gauge barrels. But they served A well. When they gave up their spirit, they were superseded with a set of grey on grey New Balance, with a number instead of a name. They looked cool enough, but A was somehow relieved when his toe started to poke through the nylon. Then he got his first pair of Nikes, Yukon II, not the best of the brand, but Nikes were the undisputed champions. When Terry saw how pleased he was with them, Nike became the standard. Air Stab and Air Vengeance followed. Badly named, but beautiful shoes.

  Trainers had become markers of time. They defined the events in A’s prison term as reliably as cell-mates.

  Hacendado was ghosted halfway through the Boks: moved in the middle of the night to a different prison. No reason was given, but it wasn’t an unusual occurrence. He was allowed only his essentials, so A inherited his wealth. And had the cell to himself for a while. He used to get the soaps out and dust their pearly skin while he listened to the radio. He never sold or rented any of the stuff. It didn’t seem right. So he lost it all when he got starred up: sent to adult prison. Allowed to keep only the trainers that he’d had on his feet.

  Adult prison was easier. A, obviously a graduate, was left alone. It was a much less aggressive place anyway. Three or four times less attacks than Feltham, they reckoned. Fewer men in for violent crime, and there seemed like less to prove. Most were pros, took a fall as a part of the job, same as watching Antiques Roadshow. Looking for tips, not looking for grief, just counting the days until release.

  They moved him to Ford Open Prison, near the end, when his EDR approached. A wind-down, to adjust the institutionalized to freedom. The mattresses were still Rizlathin, rumpling under him in the night, so that every morning started uncomfortable. They were still fenced in too, but freedom isn’t about open spaces. It’s about doing what you want to do. Most days were still like playing the same tape over and over; but the music was much better in open prison.

  Some people had spent their whole sentences at Ford. Embezzle a bank and you get a different ride to robbing one. There was a disgraced cabinet minister in there, and a failed mayor. Both Tories, hard on crime and punishment. Both as famous as him, or the boy he’d once been. Mostly they kept their heads down and their mouths shut. In a way A felt sorry for the toffs that had it soft, because for everyone else Ford was the finishing posts. They had to watch while one by one all around them were freed. One of them said once that it cost the same to keep a man in prison as it had to send his daughters to Cheltenham Ladies College. It made A wonder about the money that had been spent on him over the years. What could have been done with it.

  They tried to teach them skills at Ford. Skills other than weaving lines out of blankets to pass things between cells. A started to cook, which he hadn’t done since the secure accommodation. He felt a pride when the steady crackle and bubble of pans was his to command. He was allowed to cook a meal for Terry once.

  Terry came by quite often. Visiting was much more relaxed. Everything was more relaxed, even the screws. A supposed that the high cat. prisons punished the staff too.

  A couldn’t believe he was going to be freed until Terry confirmed it. It was too big, he couldn’t grasp the idea. He was even allowed to choose his own first name. It seemed like a psychologist’s game, a
nother trick to try and get inside his mind. So he picked one that was straightforward, normal, that gave nothing away. Which were also things he wanted to become.

  Terry gave A one last pair of shoes, on the day that he became Jack. A set of brilliant white Nike Air Escape. Top name. Top of the range. Top of the world. And on top of the box were some words of advice, from the goddess of victory, not Terry: ‘Just Do It’, they said. And he did.

  And in the car, which might as well have been a plane, because it took him to another world, and travelled faster than seemed possible without taking off, it was explained that he had family again. Because Terry was now his uncle.

  U is for Uncle.

  Uncle Terry.

  Terry groans awake. Alcohol is a curse, like something out of Dante. The more you drink, the more you want to drink, and still you’re left dehydrated. That’s a better torture than pushing boulders uphill. His hand clutches around the bedside table, hoping to find a glass of water. Failing to do so at about the same pace as his brain reminds him he forgot to put one there. He can feel the daylight beyond his eyelids, but wants to delay it a moment or two longer. The rude electronic abuse of his alarm clock is still going, though. There isn’t any satisfaction in lying in bed with its torrent bouncing around the walls. He’d throw something at it, but it sits beside the desk his computer’s on. Well, the police’s computer. It’s a lot of kit, and it’s Jack’s lifeline. You can’t mess around with that.

  He can hear his son clattering around in the kitchen, probably cooking him breakfast again. He’s changed since he’s come up here, or maybe Terry’s just noticed it now they’re spending a bit of time together. He used to be so surly, so uncooperative, like he’d been in teenage suspended animation. He’ll be twenty-seven next year, Terry’s pretty sure. How old does that make him? He staggers to the cheap wood-framed mirror on the bedroom wall. Not such a good plan.