by David Mathew
Dott is slow to reply. But then he asks: Who says we couldn’t stand each other, sir? I don’t remember saying that.
The Cookery Gov snorts. Word goes round, Dorothy. I hear tings.
I don’t talk like that, sir, Dott adds quietly.
You won’t talk like anything if you don’t get a pissing move on, son. I want you to do your pots in the next ten minutes. Lesson’s nearly over.
The lesson is nearly over, I repeat in my head.
Dott is about to bust a chuckle. Maybe I should slug the fucker with a rolling pin, Gov, he says.
Just try it, wasteman, I say, no humour in my voice.
Hey, Meaney! Roller! Dott calls. Shall I repeat your pantomime here with Alfreth?
Fuck you, rape-boy! Meaney replies.
Or I could, Gov, I could kiss him—like those screws did.
The Cookery Gov is confused. The fuck are you on, boy? he asks.
We’re just chatting shit. We’ll get the washing-up done. Stand on me.
I fucking will, son.
The Cookery Gov walks away.
Silly fat cunt, mumbles Dott. Has no idea, has he, Billy-Boy?
Of what?
Of what I could make him do. And what’s with the Dorothy shit?
I shrug my shoulders. It’s a game he plays sometimes. Like he’ll call Meaney Maggie, I tell him. Or me Wilhema. Feminizing us.
Why Maggie?
First name Magnus. Not much else he can do with that.
Magnus Meaney? Dott laughs. What did they do for an encore?
Who?
His parents.
Yo, Dott! Meaney calls. You boysing me, blood?
No, you’re blessed, mate, Dott answers.
Thought I heard my name being mentioned, cuz.
Dott fixes him with a stare. You’re mistaken, my friend, he says. Now drink from the hot water tap, you waste of time. No hands. Do it!
The command is in my head, every bit as loud as it must be in Meaney’s, I reckon; but it’s like an echo. Sometimes, unexpectedly at night, there’s a fault in the TV transmission in the pads. If I watch the box late at night, there is a slight delay between what I hear coming from my own set and what I hear from the cells in which sets are tuned to the same channel, beside, above and below me. Electronic stammer. I can hear it second-hand.
Sweat beading on his skin, Meaney turns on the hot tap.
He tests the temperature with his left knuckles. Then he bends at the waist and drops his mouth to the flow, gulping greedily.
The Cookery Gov is not impressed. He shouts the yoot’s name.
O my days! says Tweed, a skinny boy with bad speed-teeth.
Fucking stop that! the Gov calls. A few strides and he’s minimised the distance between his beer gut and Meaney’s protruding backside.
Allow him, I say to Dott.
He’s thirsty, Dott tells me. You don’t know what thirst is. He does.
So you say. Pick on someone else. What’s he done to you?
Oh, call me Mr Compassion, he adds, letting go of Meaney.
The yoot’s knees bend and he drops to the floor. In the mêlée that follows I say to Dott: Have I met you there, blood? What’s my place?
Your place in the world, he sighs. Wouldn’t we all like to know?
I bite my lip; let the surge of anger simmer and cool.
You’re scared, Dott, aren’t you? You don’t look it, cuz, granted that, but you are. You’re getting younger, you’re disappearing.
I’m getting fatter, Billy-Boy, I don’t know about disappearing.
But you said it yourself. You thought you could stop the flow back to being an infant, I explain with as much patience as I can muster; you thought you could do it by being kind, being generous. You soothed my sting—because you didn’t want to reverse, you didn’t want to be a baby.
It was you who was being a baby!
I was a baby!
You were seven years old! And frightened of a bee! Man or a mouse?
Whatever, Dott. Am I right? Then you realised it’s not about kind things that’ll keep you anchored. You need to exercise the black muscles in your warped little rapist’s soul. To stop you rotting. To keep your numbers—to keep your age—going north instead of south. Am I fucking right?
Spot on with sugar and cream, is Dott’s reply.
And you’re something to do with the silences, aren’t you? I ask. Be honest, Dott; this place has got too quiet sometimes. And it’s you.
His smile doesn’t falter, doesn’t gutter; it stays put. So ugly and unrefined is it that I shudder with the sudden notion that it will never go away. It’s as though he’s been frozen—the wind has changed while he’s pulling faces—and now the rictus will linger.
You got that bit right at least, he says. I’m helping some of you wacky kids to pass the time faster. I’m taking time.
Total immersion, I’m told, is the best way to learn a new language and to get to grips with the nuances of a foreign culture. But how long have I been totally immersed in this one? Every time I think I understand the meaning of a word I’m thrown a boomerang I fail to catch; I’m tossed a banana skin to slip on. Who was it? Who was it who told me? My brain—it must be in part down due to the heat in the Cookery Room— but my brain is slow. I cannot recall who it was who told me that Dott has been making these generous offers. But like Mumsy says, a bargain’s only a bargain if you really want it.
What’s in it for you? I ask.
It’s a hobby, Dott replies.
Don’t boys me, Dott!
Alfreth! the Cookery Gov shouts from the other side of the room.
Meaney is back on his feet, resembling, it seems to me, a newborn calf; he is not at all steady on his pins.
If you two start creating it’s the fucking block.
We’re cool, Gov, I tell the guy.
Good. Do your pots. Now.
Unless it was me that Dott gave that information to. It’s worse than amnesia, this thought I know something I can’t reach. It blunders around my body in the form of a concentrated squirt of anxiety; it follows my bloodlines, capillaries and veins. Who am I to Dott, right now, as I flinch the dead blubber and skin from the flat of a saucepan, using a washing-up wand whose hair is threadbare.
Are you listening, Dott? I say.
Can’t remember how many of these stains were here in the first place.
Fuck the stains. Are you listening?
He sounds as petulant as a schoolboy as he continues: If that fat bugger thinks I’m cleaning up earlier deposits he’s having a bubble bath.
O my days! Dott? Will you fuck the stains, please? I’ve got a punchline.
Go on.
By now I don’t much care who is eavesdropping. Full comprehension comes only to the totally immersed; and these guys around me—my contemporaries—have only toes in the water.
You’re saving up, aren’t you? I half-ask and half-dictate.
Dott favours me with a new-bike-at-Christmas expression.
That’s a nice way of putting it, he replies. Let me ask you, though, to clarify yourself.
If it’s true, I go on slowly—if it’s true you can steal time from us, as a so-called favour—and I gotta say, Dott, we’ve a lot of us been sleeping a lot late—then you’re not doing it to be nice, are you? Nice don’t work. Not for you. With nice you’re still going backward. With nice you’re dying, blood. You’re selling something, cuz; you’re getting something back, I lie?
You don’t lie.
But whatever it is, you’re saving it all up. Collecting it.
The fuck are you two gassing at? Chellow interrupts.
Allow it, Chells, I say to the man, barely turning to murmur over my left shoulder. Back to Dott I state: You’re building up a stockpile of juice.
Dott wipes his hands with a now-smudged tea towel. Asks me: What does Kate think about kings?
Admitting it is like a paper cut. Breath—hot breath, oven breath, desert breath—is a lump at the core of my torso. They can be grown, I tell him. Are you one, Dott?
He shakes his head.
Not me, Billy Boy, he answers, still grinning. It’s you.
I feel sick, but he’s not finished.
Me, I was no more than your gardener, he says, and turns away.
Six.
So why the secrecy, Ostrich-man?
I was hoping to leave without the agony of a goodbye, he answers, rather elegantly. Take that as a compliment.
Nevertheless, I’m still cross with Ostrich. Sure, I say. And I hope I never fucking see you again either.
You got it wrong, blood. He doesn’t elaborate on the point.
What time you leaving? I ask him.
Whatever the weather, blood. I’m ready.
Ready to meet Carewith again, I say.
Ostrich laughs. Creo que las cosas, poco a poco, van cambiando, he replies, translating it immediately afterwards. I think that, bit by bit, things are changing. Yeah. All the way to Lincolnshire, rudeboy, and I’ll probably end up pad-buds with Carewith waste. I’m in the pink, blood. Ostrich snorts derisively. Thought man would never see that wasteman ever again.
Carewith? I ask. Carewith bless, blood.
Ostrich sniffs away the very suggestion.
I know this non- verbal utterance of old: he doesn’t wish to pursue the matter. Sour scores, maybe; it’s not important to me. Ostrich wants to talk hills.
True says in Big Man Jail, blood, man can see hills innit.
Swear down fact, I tell him.
Point blank?
Sure, blood. Not like this rat-infested khazi, rudeboy.
O my days! Allow that, says Ostrich. God’s poetry, fam. Hills innit.
God’s poetry, I repeat. From our own pads we see walls.
There is a silence, an interlude.
Then: There’s suttin I wanna say, Ostrich tells me, the expression on his face succeeding to change the subject as effectively as the alteration in his tone of voice does, about last year. Bout this time last year, rudeboy. Evidently he’s tired already of God’s poetry.
What is it?
Moby Dick, blood.
Excuse me?
The CDs, rudeboy, he explains patiently. D’you remember that yoot, Emma Hutt? Fat as the ace of spades, blood.
Sure. Emma Hutt. Benjamin Hutt in reality—an early example, looking back, of the tendency to gainsex a prisoner’s given forename. The difference is, with Hutt’s pear-shaped figure, childbearing hips and F-cup breasts—the yoot asks for the comparison to be made. In the end, after a list of questionable decisions regarding the guy’s personal hygiene, his attitude to authority, his hunger strikes, bed-wetting, bed- soiling, arson, violence to prisoners physically larger than himself, and eventual spiral down into the hearing of voices, the speaking in tongues, and the sighting of ghosts and man-sized insects dressing up in his clothes, he is captured on a Psych Form and assigned a weekly appointment with a therapist. Final straw is when Hutt spies the face of Jesus in his porridge one weekend morning, and he’s carted off to a secured Psychiatric Hospital on the Isle of Man.
What about him?
The Moby Dick CDs went missing. Recall it, Alfreth? We all have our cells spun, couldn’t find ‘em. Hutt borrows ‘em from the Library.
I remember. Boy does block for it, I say. Three weeks.
Allow it, says Ostrich. Class as damage to prison property. It was me.
What was?
Stole ‘em from his pad innit. Door’s open to collect our dinner. Man goes in, licks a twelve-point-five of G.V., some green Rizlas and this box of CDs with, um, fucking, whale fucking thing on the box.
Why? I ask.
Ostrich thins his lips; his eyes are bright with the memory, the conquest. Man puts the box under me dinner plate, blood.
It’s a big box.
Check it, Ostrich agrees, smirking. Tray’s like a wedding cake, cuz. Like la Tour Eiffel. Screws don’t see dick.
If you been caught, I begin.
To which he shrugs. I was borrowing it, forgot the rules. Give it back. Let the fat bug snitch and sneeze. Tomorrow morning, head’s in the khazi innit. Why? Well, one to show the youngers who’s boss. And two. Shottin’, blood, shottin’. Can’t shot brown or sniff, so. Shottin’s what I do. It’s like when that Psychology Squaw says why don’t you don’t do shottin’. Don’t do shottin? he wails incredulously. Mean, why not I don’t breev, blood? Ya-nar?
Nodding. But Ostrich-man, I argue, who’s gonna buy an eighteen-CD box set of Moby Dick? What’s you hoping to get for it?
Pack-a burn? Nay-way, man starts to listen, blood: that night. And it’s good, Bill. Decide I don’t want to sell it on; wanna hear it all out. Wannit be first book I ever finish. Like a project.
Why is he telling me his war stories? I wonder at this moment.
I’m up all night listening, volume down low, continues Ostrich. Couple time, screw breaks my concentration. What’s that? This is before the cell-spins, rudeboy, no one knows it’s missing yet, not even Emma Hutt. Radio, gov. Educating my mind, gov. And yeah, so what if it’s four in the a.m? What have I got’s so important I need my beauty sleep?
Fair enough. How you get rid of it?
Didn’t, Alfie: simplicity itself, blood. Man save his Canteen. Stead ordering them fucking pick-a-chews and Mars Bars and noodles and shit, man buys what? Check it. Man buy postage stamps from me spends. Ostrich snaps his fingers and laughs like a rattle of machine gun fire. Send the CDs to Mumsy and set fire to the box. Saves on weight.
I’m baffled.
Then she can burn ‘em onto fresh CDs and send ‘em back. Now they’re mine. Hey presto, blood! Man’s play it six, seven time.
Your point being? I ask.
One line: The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Think about it, Alfreth.
It is a question of now or never.
The desert, I tell him. Why not say you were there, cunt?
I wunt. But he does not question which desert, or what I’m trying to say, or any of that time-wasting nonsense.
Yeah you were, Charlie. Grow up and stroke your bruises. I know you were there, Giggles, so don’t shit me, right, soldier?
Man got wrong man, blood, Ostrich gives me, turning his gaze to the left.
Just that: a flat denial. Nothing to talk about. Nothing along the lines of questioning my sanity, which would have been fair enough in most situations. The only thing that occurs to me, in Ostrich’s defence—something I might as well get ready for—is him saying something like: I thought you was talking about a club or a pub: the Desert. Where something happened. I’m prepared, internally, for something like this now.
I reply: Bollocks. Kate told me.
Ostrich gives me it straight barrel. I need to get out of this, he says.
He looks into my eyes; they are grainy with silver-red hair’s-breadths of bad sleep and weeping. He grips my arm.
Still me daddums, blood.
With which he releases his hold on me as abruptly as he took it up, and he begins to pull on his fingers. Is Ostrich losing his mind? I’m wondering. Has he lost it already? Where do you find a lost mind? Where could he have put it?
What daddums? I ask. You were there, blood.
I have no idea why, at this point, he has mentioned his father. The only time he has ever mentioned his father, to my mind, was when he was talking about killing him. And even that guy wasn’t a real father. Has Ostrich received a letter from his old man? A letter from a missing father is enough to splinter the strongest mind; to shatter the most robust of souls. I cannot tell you anythin
g about my own daddums.
There summing what, cuz? Ostrich asks.
He is jumpy. We are having three or four conversations at this point—and none of them makes sense.
Fucking THERE. Don’t stripe me, blood, I add—wary of advice that I’ve given to plenty of yoots myself.
I’m leaving.
Yeah I know, I tell him.
Gibberish-mode is taking over. Things are sliding and I can’t stop them. The pains I faked to get me into Kate Wollington’s room in Health Care—they come on for real. I start to sweat like a rapist in a schoolyard. My eyes mirror the redness and rawness of Ostrich’s own; I can feel the capillaries pop like champagne corks. I’m trying not to notice, Ostrich-man, I remark—but that doesn’t make much sense either. Gather your thoughts. It occurs to me that just at this moment my neurons are being polished by Dott. I have to concentrate. We don’t have much time.
I say: But listen to this. Are you listening? I’m a king in the desert.
Thank God it happens: a questioning after my own sanity. The impotence makes me feel stronger, like I do have some truth to tell.
Fuck are you talking about, Alfster-blood? Ostrich asks.
You were there. In the desert. Tell me if I can make it any clearer.
We are having five conversations now, or so it seems to me, and none of them makes any more sense than a few minutes earlier. But all of them—present in our predicament—are— What am I trying to say?
Fuck off out of my head, Dott! I scream silently. There is no response.
O my days! says Ostrich.
We are numb with a powerlessness, thoughtlessness and silence that has become less rare than it should be. We don’t know how to carry on.
So why the secrecy, Ostrich-man? I ask again—softer now.
Every argument follows a code of explosion, eye of the hurricane, then dust. Every argument is chatting breeze, in one sense; as serious as cancer, the next.
No secrecy, blood. Only just find out.
Seven.
So who you hitting these days? she asks me.
This is not blood slang. This is sarcasm.
No one, Julie, I answer. Thanks for coming. How’s Patrice?
