by David Mathew
She takes her time replying. She sips. And that’s you.
That’s me. As you know. The bee-sting.
Have I gained an advantage—any advantage at all? I’m not sure. Miss Thistle is proving as impossible to get inside as ever and just when I thought I had an in. Man think she penetrable, not im-. Man wrong.But I can’t give up now, surely to God. And Kate thinks the same.
While she waits, I ask her: And how come, by the way? How come you’re allowed to be a non-prison employee with sole charge of an inmate?
I don’t follow, Kate tells me, picture of innocence yat.
Question simple enough innit. How come? I say for the third time. Not like I’m in for fucking money laundering or bullshit. I’m a violent YP.
Kate places down her cup. Your records, she replies, are exemplars.
Which you’ve read.
Which I wrote, Billy. Grow up! Or helped to write anyway.
I’m lost, I confess. Hereby I lose any mastery I’ve gained. Comes a point when it simply doesn’t matter anymore. You slug a brew, say fuck it.
You’re halfway there, says Kate.
It’s a bit like raking leaves. Allow it taking the piss, I’ve had my jobs. I know what it’s like to scoop half a broomful and then lose it in the breeze. Keep most of what you’ve got together in one place.
You’re shaking, Kate informs me.
I’m scared, I confess, losing every point I’ve scored up till now.
Don’t be.
I can help you, I say.
I know, she replies. I’m just not sure how to use you.
I wait for another word—another insult. Finally I say, You can use me to brew up again. We’ve got no one coming.
Brew up again, Kate instructs me with a nod of the head.
I aim to please. Do I say this or only think of saying it? Not sure. There are bare things I think I say, sometimes, and I never do. Bare things I never say but imagine otherwise. I wish I could be a doctor, to look at my own head.
Miss Thistle? You’ve got power.
I’m not sure I would go that far, Billy, she replies.
I’m not like some of the other lads in this nick, I’ve come to realise. Some of the other lads reach their most eloquent and dramatic turns of phrase at the point of maximum vulnerability: when their backs are against the wall. Me, I’m different. In the possession of price-raised information, I’ve realised, I’m a veritable Camus or Sartre. I know my shit. So I say:
I think you are, Miss. Either Governor Glazer or Governor Manners has okayed you to be in sole charge of a perpetrator of a violent crime. I stabbed-
I know. You stabbed someone in the arm.
So what’s the arrangement? I want to know.
I’m not sure I follow you, Billy, Kate replies—and I like her style.
What do I get for helping you out? I ask slowly.
What do you think I can give you?
My pace is calm; my tone pure buttermilk and whipped yoghurt. Temperament-wise, I’m a fucking dessert. I want to be bruleed. Toasted in brandy, innit.
A meeting with Dott, I reply.
Swiftly on the defensive, Kate informs me she’s not certain she can swing that one around. I tell her she can, if she wants to. It’s my only hope.
I’ll see what I can do, she tells me after a longish pause. Would this do in the meantime? A visit.
To where?
To his cell in the Seg. His TV magazine.
Has he ordered one? I ask.
Yes. It would normally go to his cell on the Puppydog Wing—he paid in advance for the month—but it’s worth a Try. Why are you smiling?’
I like it, I confess. Like rubbing salt in the wound.
I don’t follow, Billy.
We’ll be giving him a TV mag in a place where he’s explicitly forbidden to watch TV, I tell her. It’s beautiful.
It’s not quite what I had in mind.
I’m still smiling. But then again, Miss, I say, you don’t have my mind.
Which point, the scary thing happens. Kate Thistle responds with:
No. No, I don’t. Not yet.
Three.
What was that nonsense I heard about you slapping your bird? I am asked.
His name is Screw Oates. I have mentioned him before but the names don’t really matter. We’re deaf to prison officers’ names, half the time. (Maybe you are as well.) They’re not deaf to ours but we’re deaf to theirs. And it’s not just the yoots who are immune to the charms of screws’ monikers. In the past I have overheard the occasional conversation between members of the Education Department, in which one will admit to another that he or she doesn’t know the name of the screw on the landing corridor with them. Consider that. You’re in a room of convicted killers, say, and your guard’s your best shot if something kicks off. And you don’t even possess the civil and self-preservative courtesy of learning the cunt’s name.
Anyway. Oates is my unofficial guide around the Dellacotte grounds as I hump my day-glo sack of reading goodies to the wankers and the nice guys. Don’t usually qualify for a chaperone, but after the slapping incident, they’re covering their arses so thickly it looks like pork rind.
She stole my money, sir, I reply accurately.
How much?
We’ve reached the Segregation Unit. It’s ugly how the feelings from such a recent encounter with the god-forsaken place rear up in me now.
Eighteen grand, sir.
Oates turns to me as he uses the first of his two keys to get us in there, out of the murmuring rain.
Eighteen grand. He even whistles.
Yes, Gov.
I would’ve killed her, Alfreth. Get in there. Do what you need to do.
Thank you, Gov.
My mind is pinching back together every thumbnail-sized scrap of memory that it can find—about the bee-sting day, back then. I want to call Julie tonight to tell her that she has wasted her money buying me books about mass hysteria and that bait: because she hasn’t. She’s wasted my fucking peas. My paper, my sheets, my work, fuck’s sake allow it. We’ll be talking again, she and I, but not about this subject specifically.
The hall still smells the same, not surprisingly: rinsed rat and garage oil and badly spent hope. Screw Oates introduces me. I think his name is Goodman, the one who nods his head in the little office.
Don’t worry, he tells me, I haven’t forgotten your ugly mug yet.
And then it’s me, with my sack. Half of the contents have already been distributed; it’s as light as mild push-ups in the Gym. I approach Dott’s cell. Some people disagree about the existence of déjà vu, but if you are in my head at this moment there is no doubt the cunt exists. It’s as though I’m approaching the cell on Puppydog Wing for the first time again.
Have you come back to see me, Billy Boy? Dott shouts.
I say nothing. I push his TV guide under the door.
How thoughtful! he shouts once more—and I turn my back. There are eyes and cameras on my every move and I can’t afford to waste this chance. I head back to the office and announce that I’m ready for D Wing.
Hours later, and I’m losing a game of pool with Shelley— my heart isn’t in it—and Ostrich is linking a yoot name of Gardener—I’m not listening—and nothing is making sense— the food in my belly like a tank of piranhas—and I’m wondering if I’ll manage to sleep tonight—and I suddenly feel queasy.
I run for the sink in my open cell. I pass the parcel. Head jerking to either side, worst cocaine headache I’ve ever had and I ain’t touched the shit, and I’m coughing and spluttering like the village idiot pisshead, shaking. The mirror shows me a frightening picture. I look dead. Gripping the side of the basin, I close my eyes. The image is still there, burned on like illegal pirate copies on a CD. Can’t get rid of the fucker.
Are
you there, Dott? I ask in my head.
When he answers I’m always there, Billy Boy I fall down.
Because it’s not possible, innit? Mind control. Messaging. So how do I explain the fact that I hear his ghastly voice? One of the female screws is present. Her name is Blake, I think; I can hardly hear her talking as she asks me if I’m all right and if I need a visit from Health Care. All I want to do is sit still on my bed, with my hands warmly holding my head, not thinking. And the last bit’s the important bit: not thinking.
I explain that I don’t need Health Care and make it clear that I’ve just had some bad food. (That so-called lasagne was rough, to be honest.) Look of relief on Screw Blake’s face; the relaxing. She knows it will come to nothing more than I threw up prison food; she won’t have to write it up. It happens every day, with the mud and pond-life we’re expected to digest.
Couple of minutes later, here’s Ostrich. Wogwun? he asks.
I’m all right, fam, I lie. I had the lasagne. Taste like upholstery, blood.
Understandably and understandingly he nods his head.
Man need a favour, cuz, he says. Man just lose at draughts innit.
I copy his gesticulation. How much you need? I ask him.
Two burn.
On the windowsill.
Safe? You sure as rain’ll fall, blood?
Take it all, I answer (recklessly in hindsight—he might have taken me up on the invitation). His eyes are all jumpy and sad. I know why. It’s nothing to do with me, swear down. He’s been sipping the blackadder hooch that Woodward on the threes has been brewing behind his radiator. Lethal gear. You don’t so much get drunk as go straight from a position of sobriety to one of partial liver failure and temporary brain damage. It cuts out your days.
My thoughts return to Dott. I have nowhere to go to escape from them.
Bending the rules slightly, Ostrich takes a seat on the bed next to me. He’s supposed to sit on the plastic chair or on the dressing table. Not speaking dick—not speaking a single word—he uses my papers and my burn to roll one up. He licks it closed with the finesse and the frown of a true friend—or at least of someone who wants to be.
Burn, he explains unnecessarily. We go twos, he offers— equally as unnecessarily.
There are tears—no, not tears, but the stings of tears en route—in my eyes as I watch him flare the cigarette and exhale against my poster of J Lo.
I nod my head and accept. I follow the blood’s lead. What be going on? he asks.
Complicated.
Man nods his head and rinses his mouth with a yawn that he loop-spits into my sullied and browning basin. Why me? I have time to argue with myself. All I done ain’t no one’s business. But I suppose it is. Everyone’s business is some cunt’s business. Or it’s not business. We smoke our burn. Sosh time is coming to an end. Ostrich knows it although he doesn’t wear a watch—and I fucking know it because I can feel it. Because you learn it. Or because you learn to feel it. Blood times it perfectly. Saying this:
We trade, yeah? You win pool, man spill his bake beans. Now it the other way round: you offer me burn. No question. Man asking why. So man tinking, how can man help man out in return? No money. Shirt on man back? Allow it that noise. Fuck that noise. Man can creep man some rumour.
Some rumour, I repeat.
Allow it.
I’m nodding my head. Be my go-ahead guest, blood, I tell him.
And I repeat: coming back from the Seg is like returning from a foreign country. I feel like I’ve been stalled at Customs for half a week. I’m about to feel more so.
You were away, yeah, man talk about Dott and his control over time.
Somewhat jealously I agree with this. It’s part of what I’ve discussed with Kate Thistle.
There’s no such thing, I state staunchly. It’s a bit like feeling that Kate is having an affair: I wanted it to be between her and me.
Allow it. Man’s dramatically cut down on man’s reality intake, blood.
That’s one way of putting it, I tell Ostrich. What do you mean, brere?
He can mess with mandem’s head. He can take away some time.
So the secret’s out—even if it’s a bitter pill of a secret and one that I remain surprised with myself that I want to keep to myself. Then Ostrich snuffs out the burn in my toothmug; he straightens his back—it goes click—and summons up a summary of sorts. He’s a road man still, even inside the walls: a dreamer, a disbeliever—so while his road vocabulary is always fresh, up-to-date, he is about to bring to bear a collection of words to explain a phenomenon that we’re all not used to. It causes him a great deal of effort (‘Sosh Time over!’ someone shouts) and he knows he has only a few seconds.
Back to your cell, mate, Screw Blake announces from my door.
Yes, Miss, Ostrich replies. At the door jamb he turns and says: A time-vampire, blood. Suck out your time. He doesn’t wait for a reaction.
Allow it, I call back, suddenly absurdly grateful—a complete change of my emotions—to have a confidante. I’m about to find out, cuz. No. Not just a confidante: a witness before the act. Ostrich is my safety shot, I realise; my alibi, almost. And I need to tell him quickly.
What, man? he shouts when I can no longer see him from my bed.
Cookery Class back on for tomorrow! Dott’s on the Labour List!
And so am I.
Four.
They recruit you to do bare dirt for them, man! Then they spray you up with nine em-em! Shit’s not right, blood!
But a contrary contention is swiftly offered. Ah, says the other, whisking his cake-mix with a furious and a genuine passion, but he took his chance, bruv. Thirty grand is a big change!
Not big enough to get sprayed!
The noise is outlandish, the violent subject of the conversation—usually banned inside the classroom— permitted here in the heat of the Cookery Room only because the two speakers happen to be reflecting on the implications of a film seen last night.
Believe it or not, the two speakers are Roller and Meaney. The Cookery Class is packed full. This is a test. Every one of the ten cookers is being used—oven roaring, hotplate blazing—and as I say, the noise is nearly unbearable. But the heat! O my days! The heat! The sweat! And this is a test. Some will pass and some will fail. Not a test of our cooking, of course: it’s a test of our stamina (parched air, building-site din) and it’s a test of our trust. This test is the last chance for a Cookery Class in the future; it’s a chance to get Roller and Meaney together—with Dott. And with me. No pun intended, it’s a pressure cooker. We are the ingredients the scene needs. Ten students means this: at least five (loud) conversations going on at one time. Often more. Some yoots can one-man- band it, innit, holding three or more chats simultaneously—to the backdrop noise of scraping knives and banging pots.
So I’m listening to a review of a film called Mad Filth—
bottled him with a perfume bottle still, blood, yat—
and I’m listening to a preview of an expected sexual liaison—
since I come in here she’s got nice bums and nice plums; I’ll move to her, blood— even though he’s a lifer.
And then I’m listening to so much shit being chatted that I’m busting vex and I want to take the butter knife I’m holding and ram it right into Meaney’s arm. Twist it good; grind it hard. Really put it on the cunt— although he’s done nothing wrong to me.
There’s a high squeak of pain—remarkable that it can half silence the noise; more remarkable yet when I understand it’s my own. Thoughts tumble through my head. I’ve been burnt on my arm. The burn’s too high up. I’ve been bitten by an insect.
I’ve been stung by a bee.
I’ve been stung by a bee.
The notion overwhelms me. Pain exactly at the point where the fuzzy little fucker stung me when I was seven. I shake my arm and let go of
the butter knife by mistake. Thank the Lord!—the bastard thing rattles against the saucepan in which I’m cooking bolognese sauce.
Alfreth! the Gov shouts.
If that knife was anywhere else but on a stove right now, I’d be looking at at least two months down block.
Just an insect bite, sir, I call back. Sorry, sir.
But I got you for a second there, didn’t I, Billy Boy?
That’s the voice at the back of my head. Dott’s voice. When I turn to him—Dott—over there in the corner, where he’s been since the start of the class, he is smiling. He mouths it—no noise—but I hear him in my skull.
Nearly made you do it, Billy. Could’ve made you if I’d wanted.
I concentrate on his face; I concentrate on his voice. Though it ripples through me like revulsion I even think of his crimes—or what I know of them. I must get closer, I tell myself, getting stressed. But Dott—Dott can’t hear me. I can’t do it, any more than I can ride a unicycle or cure myopia. I start to take out my frustration on my sauce, compulsively stirring in shake after shake of chilli powder. Dott’s on my mind but he’s not in my head. Left the building; hung up the line. Drops me one lousy communiqué and then dumps me. I remember him shaving his chest in my presence.
What the hell are you doing, Alfreth?
It’s the Cookery Gov’s voice, in my ear. Makes me jump.
When I blink my way back, two lively tears spring from my eyes into my bolognese.
I could nick you for that, he informs me.
For what, sir?
Misuse of prison property.
I’m still not quite certain what he means. What, the chilli, sir? I ask.
Yes, the chilli, sir. You got a deathwish or something?
I just like it spicy, sir, I improvise.
You’d better had, Alfreth: you’re eating the fucking lot.
The walk from the Education block to the Wing will be a race with the Devil, as I struggle to hold into my intestine what desperately wishes to crash out. The noise inside my cell will be like a tractor dropped into a duckpond. But first there is another ordeal. First I have to eat the fucker. Twin agonies, in fact. I can’t bear Ronald Dott’s indifference to me as he works on his cheesey pasta bake. Is he taunting me? Indirectly, maybe, but not full on. He’s in his own little world, and no one’s invited. No one’s speaking to him. When the dish is done he sits down with the rest of us to eat what he has prepared. Eating in the Cookery Room is the only quiet time of the session. We are no more likely to speak than lions around a fallen zebra are to flirt or play. We guard our prey avidly.
