This Is How

by M. J. Hyland

  I stand. I can’t stay sitting.

  There’s somebody at the cell door.

  ‘Stand back,’ he says.

  It’s the red-headed officer and he’s delivering fish and chips. He puts the tray down on the floor and I nearly cry out at the sight of it. Two big piles of hot fish and chips brought in from the local chippy and there’s four pickled onions and two battered sausages. I grab my plate and sit on the cot to eat.

  ‘If you get sick again,’ says the guard, ‘raise the alarm. Okay?'

  ‘Okay.’

  Gardam doesn’t take his meal.

  ‘You can have mine,’ he says.

  ‘You sure?'

  ‘Yeah.’

  I take his plate and set about eating both lots. I eat like a wolf, don’t say a word while I do it and don’t care that Gardam’s going hungry. I lick my lips and my fingers and I lick the plates clean and I can’t remember a meal ever tasting so good.

  I lie down afterwards and so does he and I’m almost asleep when he talks again.

  ‘Did you spew today?’ he says.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Everybody does it at least once.’

  ‘Yeah?'

  ‘And they usually also talk a lot.’ I sit up and face him.

  ‘I got the impression you didn’t want to talk.’

  ‘Yeah, but then I realised you might be the last person I ever talk to.’

  Gardam lights a cigarette and sucks the smoke so hard into his lungs there’s hardly anything left to exhale.

  ‘Do you want to talk now?’ I say.

  ‘I stabbed my wife,’ he says. ‘Knifed her at least ten times.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I did it with a kitchen devil.’

  ‘That’s a sharp knife.’

  He looks at me like I’m an idiot.

  ‘Why did you kill her?'

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Maybe because she was a bitch.’

  His cigarette’s finished and he puts his orange finger in his mouth. ‘Anyway, I feel like shit. My trial’s nearly over and I’m going down for life.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘I want to die,’ he says.

  He’s got a tattoo of a swallow on his neck and I want to ask him why it’s a swallow.

  ‘Still, I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘But maybe—?’

  ‘Maybe nothing. I just want to die now.’

  I say nothing.

  ‘Ever noticed,’ he says, ‘when men get older, they laugh less and less?'

  I shrug.

  ‘Even a dog keeps wagging its tail when it gets older.’

  I’ve an image of a man sewing his lips shut, a thick needle piercing the flesh and the white thread dragged through, but there’s no blood, just the needle going through.

  24

  It’s Thursday the twenty-fifth of October. Day four of my trial. Perkins comes to the cell to tell me there’s a delay, an adjournment till tomorrow.

  ‘How are you holding up?’ he says.

  ‘I hate the way the jurors look at me. They look like they hate me or they don’t care.’

  ‘That’s normal. Don’t take it personally. Some of them are probably intimidated by the formality of the proceedings.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Are you sleeping?'

  ‘I want to plead guilty to manslaughter.’

  ‘I thought we’d gone over this. I told you then you needed to make your mind up. It’s too late now. You’ll have to let the jury decide.’

  ‘And if they decide I’m guilty of murder?’

  ‘Then we might consider an appeal.’

  ‘And if I lose that?'

  He puts his hand on my upper arm, squeezes a little.

  ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I hope we won’t come to it.’

  ‘So you’re still optimistic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I nod. He takes his hand away and leaves a patch of warmth behind.

  ‘I have to go now. Is there anything you need? Anything that can’t wait?'

  ‘Could you bring me some books?'

  ‘What kind?'

  ‘Maybe something about snooker or cars or something like that.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  He leaves.

  Gardam’s still up in his courtroom, the one across the hall from mine. This means I’ve got the cell to myself.

  I get under both blankets.

  An hour or so later, a doctor comes.

  ‘Don’t get up,’ he says.

  He crouches down beside me.

  ‘I’m going to give you some pills for the next few days,’ he says. ‘The pink one is to stop you getting sick and the white one will help you sleep. But they’re pretty strong. You might feel quite drowsy.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘I suppose I won’t be able to drink alcohol or operate heavy machinery.’

  He smiles and pats my hand.

  ‘Good luck.’

  When he leaves, I get up and put one of the blankets on Gardam’s cot.

  I take the pills and sleep through till morning.

  After breakfast, day five of my trial, the guard gives me four more pills, two of each.

  ‘You’ll get more tonight,’ he says.

  ‘Is my brief coming?'

  ‘Yes, soon as he can get here.’

  Gardam doesn’t eat his breakfast, stays in his cot under the thick blanket.

  He leaves his breakfast bowl at the foot of his bed and looks at me.

  ‘Do you want one of my pills?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah. Good.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know what it is?'

  ‘It’s a drug, right? Something that’ll take the edge off?'

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well I want it then, who wouldn’t?'

  I go to him with the pill, but he’s changed his mind. He holds his hands out for me, shows me how violent his shakes are.

  ‘Maybe keep it,’ he says. ‘It’s your pill.’

  I put the pill down on the floor next to his bowl of cereal.

  ‘You can have it later,’ I say. ‘But maybe you should eat first.’

  He looks down at the pill.

  ‘Maybe you could mix it through the cereal for me,’ he says. ‘That’ll force me to eat a bit.’

  I crush the pill between my finger and thumb and sprinkle it over the cereal.

  ‘You’ll have to mix it through,’ he says. ‘Or I might just eat the top.’

  I mix the pill through the milk and cornflakes with the plastic spoon, then hand him the bowl.

  ‘Hope I don’t puke me guts up,’ he says. ‘I haven’t eaten for days.’ The courtroom’s packed and, just as I’m being cuffed to the rail of the dock, my father walks in.

  He’s alone and he’s wearing a black suit and he sits at the outside edge of a wooden pew, close to the aisle. I swallow, but it’s too late to stop my eyes from flooding and too late to stop the thought that, if I’m convicted of murder, I might not see him again, or only if I’m allowed a day’s leave to go to his funeral.

  I look at him, just keep looking, but he gets up from his seat and leaves. His chin is thrust forward at a strange angle and his feet take short, quick steps. Maybe he’s only come so that he could leave, so that I’d be forced to watch him leaving and, in this way, even without speaking, he’s told me he doesn’t want to see me again, that he’s seen the last of me.

  I look at the jurors.

  Nothing but contempt.

  The court’s adjourned till Monday morning.

  I ask the copper for some paper and a pen and he gives me a page from his pocketbook.

  I write a note for Perkins, I need to talk to you. It gets passed over.

  He comes to the dock.

  ‘What is it?'

  ‘I want this to stop. I want to plead guilty to manslaughter or something.’

  He shakes his head, takes no time to think it over.


  ‘It’s too late. I’m almost certain the Crown will refuse it.’

  ‘Why?'

  ‘It’s too late.’

  ‘What do you think of my chances now?’

  ‘The same as before. No better and no worse.’

  ‘Fair to middling?'

  ‘Perhaps a little better than that. The landlady was a hostile witness.’

  I frown.

  ‘Although she was called by the prosecution, she took every chance to say things in your favour.’

  ‘So, do you think—'

  ‘Listen, Patrick, I’ve absolutely got to be going. I’m running very late.’

  He’s got my blood boiling.

  ‘Do you have a dinner engagement?’ I say.

  He looks away, thinks a moment, then turns back, looks at me, hard and square.

  ‘No, Patrick. I have a hospital to go to. My wife’s taken quite seriously ill.’

  ‘Shit,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I don’t know if I believe him.

  I’ve taken another pill and I’ve given the second to Gardam.

  The heating’s broken down and it’s 2 a.m. and neither of us can sleep. We sit on our cots with our blankets wrapped round our shoulders and we’ve both got our arms wrapped round our legs.

  We’ve been talking for a couple of hours. He suddenly gets weepy.

  ‘Misery’s made me a cunt,’ he says.

  ‘How so?’ I say.

  ‘My father was a fucking cunt too. He savaged me and I’ve gone and done the same. I once said to a bloke—we was stood outside a laundrette—I won’t kill you but I will make you walk with a limp.’

  I’ve no idea what to say.

  ‘I’ve ended up here ‘cos I was fucking miserable, and now that I’m here, I’m even more miserable.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ I say.

  I lie down, put my head on the pillow.

  ‘Are you going to sleep now?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m going to try,’ I say.

  ‘You do that,’ he says. ‘I’ll talk to myself.’

  Gardam talks till late every night, and then at 6.30 on Monday morning we’re both awake, seem to have woken at the same instant, both of us too nervous about the final days of our trials to get rest and last night there were no more pills to get us through.

  ‘I’ll warn you now about the last day,’ he says. ‘The courtroom’s gonna be packed with onlookers. All the fucking ghouls will come.’

  I open the book that Perkins gave me, a book about deep-sea diving.

  ‘Like Houdini said,’ Gardam goes on, ‘they’ll come to see you die.’

  I close the book. ‘You like Houdini?'

  ‘You know,’ he says, ‘when men got hanged for murder the hangman used to fill a sack with sand and the sand was weighed so it was the same as what you weighed.’

  ‘Why?'

  ‘To make sure your head broke clean off your neck.’

  A few years ago and that’s what I might’ve faced.

  I look at a picture of a deep-sea fish. It looks happier than me and a lot happier than Gardam.

  ‘Look at this fish,’ I say.

  ‘And they put a big dish under the trap door to catch your shit,’ he says.

  I say nothing.

  After the officer’s come to the cell with our breakfast, Perkins arrives.

  He’s wearing a dark suit and a red scarf tied in a loose knot around his neck and there are crumbs on the scarf, as though to show me he’s been wearing it while he had his delicious hot breakfast. I take this as proof his wife’s not sick and dying in hospital.

  ‘Good morning,’ he says.

  He turns his coat inside out and, with the silk lining face down, he sits on the coat, at the very end of my cot.

  ‘The bed’s not dirty,’ I say. ‘They wash the blankets.’

  ‘I see,’ he says. ‘I went to the judge last night to have Georgia Powell struck out as a witness,’ he says, ‘but she’s been subpoenaed because you used your phone call from South King Street police station to speak to her. Do you remember? You phoned her on the day of your arrest.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I’d forgotten her last name was Powell.

  ‘You should have told me this. You really should have told me this.’

  ‘Will it make any difference?'

  ‘The prosecution will undoubtedly make something of the fact that you used your phone call to speak to a girlfriend and not your family.’

  ‘I tried to call my mum that morning, but the phone was out of order.’

  ‘You should have called your mother from the police station instead of calling your girlfriend.’

  ‘Georgia isn’t my girlfriend.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ he says.

  Gardam stands and goes to the cell door, slides the hatch across and shouts out for a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘I need some fags!’ he shouts. ‘Somebody bring me some fags!'

  Perkins reaches for his briefcase.

  ‘I’ve got some purple Silk Cut,’ he says.

  ‘Can’t stand them,’ says Gardam.

  Perkins stops looking in his briefcase.

  A few moments later, Gardam gets up. ‘You’d better give me one of those then,’ he says.

  Perkins finds the pack and hands it over. ‘Take the pack.’

  We both watch Gardam light up.

  ‘But why is Georgia being called?’ I say.

  ‘Because of the things you said to her.’

  ‘I hardly said anything.’

  ‘Well, that’s the prosecution’s very point. It’s what you didn’t say that they’ll endeavour to use against you.’

  In his effort to hide the fact that he’s irritated, Perkins speaks now as though he has a pen between his teeth.

  ‘The prosecution will argue that what you didn’t say further supports a verdict of murder. They’ll say your silence evinces an intention to kill.’

  The officer comes.

  ‘Time to go,’ he says.

  Perkins gets up and goes to speak to Gardam.

  ‘Didn’t you ever learn how to say please and thank you?'

  Gardam looks at Perkins like he’s a fool.

  Most of the morning the judge’s been talking to the prosecutor, on a ‘point of law’ as they say, and the jury’s been sent out and my mouth’s dry and my tongue’s hot. I’ve had this terrible thirst since the trial started and they only give me one glass of water in the morning and I usually have to wait until the midday adjournment for another.

  I turn to the cop on my left and point to my tongue. He looks away, puts both hands on the rail of the dock like a man seasick on a boat.

  ‘Water,’ I whisper.

  He ignores me.

  ‘Water,’ I say.

  He does nothing.

  The prosecutor calls a new witness, a girl by the name of Mandy. Nielsen introduces her to the courtroom as Welkin’s future bride. I’ve never seen her before and I’d remember if I had. She’s got long, straight blonde hair, all the way down to her hips, and she’s got the face of an idiot.

  According to Nielsen, the relationship with Welkin, although a long-distance one, was very strong. Mandy, he tells the court, was doing an apprenticeship at a hair salon. Instead of salon, he mispronounces the word as saloon.

  ‘And is it not true that you would very likely have married?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘that’s completely all true.’

  ‘Is it also true that the deceased was due to meet you at the hair saloon the day that he was murdered?'

  ‘Yes. He was going to come on the early train.’

  ‘And is it not also true that he meant to continue to discuss the prospect of marriage—'

  ‘But he screwed other women. He screwed them like rabbits. He used them up like cheap whores. He probably screwed Georgia.’

  The judge calls for order, asks the prisoner to stop shouting.

  I hadn’t known I was shouting.

&nbs
p; Perkins cross-examines Mandy pretty well. He manages to establish that the couple were not officially engaged, that their relationship was not only long-distance but that they’d only spent a week together, that they had known each other for less than two months, that Mandy is as dumb as she looks.

  Welkin’s alleged future bride is released from the witness box and it’s the end of the day’s proceedings.

  Perkins comes to reassure me.

  ‘I don’t think that did the Crown much good,’ he says.

  ‘Why not?'

  ‘She wasn’t very credible.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  He flicks his cuff, looks at his watch, walks away.

  It’s Tuesday, day seven, and Georgia’s in the witness box. She’s wearing a black dress over black trousers and her long hair is tied in a neat, shiny ponytail.

  Nielsen’s examination-in-chief begins.

  ‘What did the accused say to you, Miss Powell, when he phoned you on the morning of the twenty-ninth of August?'

  ‘He said he’d done something mad. That he’d done something really stupid.’

  ‘Miss Powell,’ says the judge. ‘You may relax in the seat. And please make sure you continue to speak clearly.’

  She smiles at him and what a lovely smile, the first I’ve seen in court, the bright smile of a movie star.

  The prosecutor goes on. ‘And what did he say next, Miss Powell?'

  ‘He said that he’d killed one of the boarders. He said he’d killed the man in the next room.’

  ‘And what else did he say?'

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I have your statement here, Mrs…I beg your pardon, Miss Powell, and if you’d like me to refresh your memory—'

  ‘He said he didn’t expect to be in a cell. He said he wanted to be with me.’

  She looks over at me and I want to look away. Yesterday I saw my face in the mirror in the showers and I looked ugly.

  Mr Nielsen QC looks at the jury. ‘But he wasn’t upset, Miss Powell, or sad, or remorseful—'

  ‘Yes. But—'

  ‘Yes. And what did he say had made him so angry?’

  ‘Because he’d been looking forward to all the things we could do together.’

  ‘Including sexual things?’

  ‘He didn’t say that.’

  ‘But he did speak, at some length, about the romantic things he’d been looking forward to doing to you?’

  ‘With me.’

  ‘Ah, I see, so it’s true, Miss Powell, that he had romance on his mind?'