O My Days

by David Mathew

  She’s had the fucking oopy cough, innit.

  She’s had the what?

  The oopy cough. It was a real awful couple days, says Julie.

  Whooping cough? I ask.

  That’s what I said! she protests. Coughing its little lungs out, weren’t she? But she’s better now. Thanks for your concern, Billy.

  I didn’t know! Are you sure?

  Already we are going wrong; I can sense her getting angry. When she asks me, What do you mean, are you sure? that little vein pulses in her temple. It’s still a thing I find cute about her.

  Sure it’s whooping cough? I add. Did you take her to the doctor?

  No, Billy, I took her to B&Q. What sort of question is that? Vein pulsing harder now. I’m a good mother to our daughter, Billy, you know.

  I’m not saying you’re not!

  It occurs to me right now that Julie has arrived intent on achieving a disagreement. Spoiling for a fight, they say in some of the crappy books I borrow from the Library when my brain is too tired to focus on anything more substantial. She is leaving me, I realise suddenly. Paternal concern battles with lovelorn pride.

  What I mean is, I begin.

  Oh I know what you mean, William! she interrupts. You mean I can’t look after our daughter without setting fire to your bank account—or so you think. And don’t pretend you weren’t gonna bring that subject up either.

  It is not the case that we must place our hands palms down on the reinforced plastic tables in the Visits Room, but the common word is that it’s a good idea to do so. It keeps the screws happy and relaxed. Especially when matters start getting a tad frayed between con and visitor—as is clearly the case right now. A screw named Southern is not far from my table. I place my hands palm down on the surface. I have a reputation as a hitter, after all.

  I try to be reasonable, saying Julie, Julie, please. What I’m getting at is, whooping cough takes more than a couple of days, usually.

  She laughs like a seal. So you’re getting a medical degree now, are you? Tell me what my symptoms are, Billy. Why don’t you do that?

  Your symptoms?

  That’s what I said. What’s wrong with me?

  And God I’m struggling, now. I want to hit her again; I really do. Not in a moment of red mist, as I did before. I am thinking about it. I want to do it. The hands on the table—they are balling into fists.

  Julie notices. Is that for my benefit? she asks coolly.

  The vein in her temple isn’t moving anymore; she has calmed down. My impending violence has soothed her. She has been waiting for this to happen. Provoking it. The significance of what she has said is now clear crystal.

  You’re pregnant, I tell her. So what are we saying? Morning sickness?

  My delivery is so offhand that it makes Julie blink. The disgust I feel—not disgust that some other guy has slept with her, which is bad enough, and will need dealing with, but my disgust with myself that I can feel good by making the mother of my child feel bad—is whelming. How has it come to this? Pot-shots and name-calling.

  Who is it, may I ask? Bailey, I suppose.

  You don’t know him, Julie replies, a little closer, I suspect, to tears than she is letting on. The remark is ambiguous.

  I don’t know who? Know Bailey, or your new squeeze?

  Oh, you definitely know my new squeeze, Billy.

  I’m confused.

  Bailey’s gone.

  She is finding this difficult. Adrenalin is washing through my system as I decode the latest in a long line of riddles—all of them leading back to the arrival of Ronald Dott.

  Wait a second, Julie. When you say Bailey’s gone.

  I am pacing myself, the fists clenching a little bit once again.

  Do you mean gone. As in, gone with my money?

  I’m sorry, Billy.

  It seems as though Julie has only been here for a few minutes—but it also seems as though she hasn’t left since the last time she was here. We haven’t moved an inch from this very table. In fact, it is the same table.

  Slowly. Gone with my eighty grand? I say, searching for clarity.

  I trusted him. He said he’d make it an investment, Julie tells me.

  Utilising screw-antenna, screw-logic and screw-anti-wit, the screw approaches on his screw-issue screw-shoes, in his screw-blacks and his screw-tie, and looms screwishly close, anticipating screw-response. There will be none required. Instead I enlist his assistance.

  Sir. Is it possible for man to see his daughter if she sick bad sick?

  The screw affords me screw-shortshrift and screw- advance-denial. He says, plucking at his black tie, You know the channels, son.

  Screw plods off.

  What you getting at, Billy? Julie asks.

  Am I smiling? I don’t know. I reply: You can’t bring her here, right? Or am I wrong?

  What? Coz I think you’re gonna bray her?

  Julie definitely does smile. It is not a pleasant smile, not this time; it translates like a foreign language. It’s an anti-smile, proffered in an atmosphere of garlicky disgrace.

  No.

  Then what are you getting at, William? Julie wants to know. She was sick. Now she’s not. But I’m not scared of bringing her to see her father.

  I’m shaking my head.

  Contamination, I say. Whooping cough. Listen. You got a ticket from the doctor saying whooping cough, right? Well say she’s still sick. Might get permission for compassionate leave.

  Julie is stunned by the notion. Talk about that fucking vein pulsing!

  You would do that? she asks. Use your daughter.

  I’m eyeballing her.

  Not a man in here wouldn’t do the same, I tell her. You’ll use anything, Julie, and it don’t usually work. So you wait. You wait for a good one, I say, fingers relaxed on the helmet-plastic.

  And this is a good one? Julie hisses. Your daughter being sick.

  It might work.

  For what purpose? Julie says—and it occurs to me that nearly everything she has said today has contained some form of questioning. What are you intending to do if they let you out for a day?

  See Patrice.

  But what else? Forgetting the fact she’s actually getting better.

  She don’t need to be, I say to Julie.

  You want me to make her ill again?

  Julie is leaning closer to me when you might think she would lean further away—but she hasn’t yet heard all I have to say. I have yet to think it.

  It’s a chance, Julie. And by the way, I say, leaving a pause. You say I know your new boy.

  You stabbed him.

  This narrows it down to nine or ten possibilities, but I don’t have a watch and I don’t know how close we are to the curtain call of Visits.

  Julie, please.

  It comes to something, I know—it comes to impending doom, let’s be honest—when a fair-sized proportion of your sentences with your ting begin with: INSERT NAME, and then the word please. What it means, in gut-born essence, is that no fucking thing is being said. Am I losing my mind? Is my mind losing me?—There it goes, the old cunt, with its off-to-London spotted hanky of essential belongings, at the end of a pole or stick. Yeah, Charlie? Well I come from London. Go back, cat—go back, Dick—your money won’t be worth horseshit on a shovel when you arrive. It’s like something I overhear when I’m doing the Library run to one nameless classroom to another—and some yoot, long since left for Big Man Jail, says something like, In Ghana, blood, five pound and you’re a rich man. Well, you’re not in Ghana anymore, are you, I tell the man. Next three weeks he’s spitting me evils. Fuck him.

  There’ll be feds all over you, says Julie, after a pause, returning to the theme of my application for a day’s compassionate release on the grounds of serious illness of a loved one.

 
I’m a Redband. Perhaps I’ve earned something. Who I stab? One of the boys?

  No, Julie answers, and then reconsiders immediately. Well, maybe. I don’t know, Billy. Maybe he was. He says he weren’t.

  Who says?

  Billy.

  But I’m Billy, I protest.

  Julie slouches back into her chair. He’s Billy too.

  What—and then you meet Billy Three? Fuck this, Julie!

  That’s enough, Alfreth, warns a different screw—I think the name is Vincent—but instead of apologising to her, as I might have done, a month earlier, I offer her, in her screw-identicals, her screw-neuterings, an anti-smile.

  I don’t have time for this bullshit, I say to Julie quietly. Who?

  Screw Vincent lingers. Julie tries to smile her away but the effort does little to reassure her, so Julie gives up, returning her attention to me—eager with something to say. So she says it.

  Billy. His name is Billy. Billy Cardman.

  The shock is enough, not to make me bellow, but to make me silent. Screw Vincent doesn’t like for one moment this sudden cessation of the row. It makes her nervous. As Ostrich himself once said to me: Blood. Sometimes my threats are silences and sometimes my threats are stones. This silence is clearly a threat.

  Billy Cardman is the name of the man who put me in this nick. Not saying most victims want to be victims. Not saying he’s the exception either. He’s the one I plug in the arm with my knife. I say:

  Sorry.

  I’m sorry to Billy Cardman (but the man wouldn’t give me what I was asking for).

  I got involved in a victim support group, Billy.

  This is too much, I tell her. Now you’re supporting the enemy. It’s not bad enough I’m in here because of him.

  Because of yourself, Billy.

  But now I’ve got to picture him fucking you? Too much, ting!

  Julie is getting upset again—if she ever stopped being upset in the first place. Actually, come to think of it, if she ever stopped being upset from the moment I was sentenced.

  You don’t have to picture him doing that, Billy.

  How can man not? You know what he’s got? He’s got revenge, I tell her. Like I’m going to find revenge when I get granted day release to see my sick little girl. You wait and see if I don’t.

  I’ll refuse you access. I’ll say you’re dangerous.

  I snort. You get one thing right at least.

  Julie smiles: this one seems sincere. You’re a cuddly bear and you know it, lover. Or should I keep my voice down, blood?

  She waits until Screw Vincent has moved away.

  But things have changed, Billy. You know they have. You’ve changed. So have I. I didn’t expect it to happen with Billy.

  I’ll be a laughing stock, Julie!

  Why? Who’s gonna know?

  My boys!

  Oh, please. Your boys, Bill? Where are they? While I’m here, where are they? Seriously. Do you think they still care about you?

  This hurts. This hurts because I’ve known it to be true for some time. I lean forwards now, my hands still in the right place.

  Do you know something? I ask Julie. I was like a king once, me. I was growing like a king.

  What are you talking about? You been brewing hooch?

  In the desert, Julie. In a place you can only dream about.

  She backs away from me, saying: Well, you’re in no doubt they’re gonna let you out for a while, Bill. Problem is, it’ll be to a Psych Ward.

  You don’t know anything about my past, Julie.

  Her eyebrows beetle. Shut up, now, honestly. You’re scaring me.

  One last favour, I say to her.

  I owe you that, she admits, sounding a jot relieved if you wanna know.

  Just a visit, I begin.

  Okay, no worries. If they’ll let you out you can visit.

  No. Julie, listen. Just a visit I want you to make.

  Oh, Billy—of course I’ll visit. I wasn’t on the straight when I said you can’t see Patrice. Maybe it was my hormones jabbering.

  No. Not to me. I don’t care if you don’t see me anymore. You’ve broken my heart, Julie.

  She is baffled. Then to who? she asks.

  Another D. Another Defendant. His name is Ronald Dott. Ask him one question, I say to Julie.

  Eight.

  What’s the hullabaloo this morning? asks Kate Thistle, once we’ve earned a moment to ourselves.

  Miss Patterson is unexpectedly back at work, but she’s taking a piss-break. Female staff are obliged to go downstairs to the other toilets owing to a plumbing fuck-up in the Ladies’ shitter on the ones. We’ve got at least five minutes, what with all the doors she’ll have to lock and unlock. With a bit of good fortune, I think to myself, the staff toilets are akin to ours: always out of bumwad and with honky flushes that mean you have to pull on the chain for about an hour like a demented campanologist. You don’t want the next yoot along to see what you’ve left behind. I always make sure I have my movement before Movements— not that I’ve had much to expel, not of late. I’ve been off my feed for some time.

  I answer Kate Thistle’s question with a shrug and a tilt of my head. Four yoots on A Wing, I tell her, started a riot.

  Oh, how exciting, she replies in a sarky, ironic tone that implies she is anything but impressed. About anything in particular?

  I could say random cuntishness, Miss. That’s what it normally is, innit. Random cuntishness from the screws to us, leading to random cuntishness back. Or just us: playing up, as Mumsy used to say.

  But not this time? she asks. No bad food, no cell spins?

  You’re learning the lingo, Miss. But no. It’s Dott. He’s taking.

  Taking what?

  Taking back part of his investment.

  Predictably enough, we’re in the Library. We’re not alone. The prisoners from the Spanish class— learning Spanish—have their turn to visit, and there are eight of them present, with their teacher. Don’t know her name; she’s new, I think. Throughout what we’re trying to say—Kate and I—we are hassled by these Ds and Co-Ds, re-issuing True Crime, horror-lite, some Spanish textbooks and dictionaries. Only one of the guys—by gigglingly asking me what Julie is gonna make of my new friendship with Kate—actually acknowledges the fact that I am having a conversation. You often become almost invisible when you achieve a Redband. There is more concern about borrowing a pen to fill in a magazine requisition.

  Investment?

  I nod my head. He’s put quite a lot in the kitty. Thank you, blood. Next Tuesday, all being. For Dott it’s payback time. Literally. Pay, back, time.

  Whereas mine nods, Kate’s shakes—her head, that is.

  I was beginning to think I understood all of this, she tells me.

  Hard lines. He’s buying time, Kate. In the sense you know about. He’s trading. What he gives with one hand—like taking away yoots’ spare time, to make time go quick time—he just fucking, takes back with the other, Miss. He causes damage, like you say. It keeps him anchored at the right age. He don’t wanna slip backwards so he needs to trade some damage.

  What happened in the riot? Kate wants to know.

  One ear-split; one nose-split; one hospitalisation: a left eye.

  Great. That should keep him going.

  He wants to die, Kate.

  Who? This voice belongs to a weasel named Peel, who is standing in front of me with a yellow English-Spanish dictionary in his hands. I can help.

  Wash your mouth out, young man, Kate tells him.

  Sorry, Miss. Seriously, Alfie—who?

  There is no point in lying. Half the population of Puppydog Wing and a good number on the normal Wings, too—they want to die. From time to time. The impulse grows. I’ve had it myself, way back when. The future being black, and all that. You can
either ping yourself with the elastic band around your wrist—get that tiny spark of discomfort that constitutes a replacement for self-harming—or you can bang your head on the pad wall and get a Self-Harm report written out on you. Or you can properly self-harm, of course—there’s always that option. There’s all the fun of the fair, rudeboy! For some yoots, the phrase ‘the CD’s scratched’ has a completely different interpretation: that yoot will have forearms like city road maps. That yoot will go through cigarette lighters faster than packets of burn itself. For that yoot, it’s a case of tortures for courses; torture, torture, everywhere, and not a qualified shrink.

  Dott.

  Uncharacteristically, but not unexpectedly, Peel is quickly irate. I’d pull the switch on that wasteman myself. Fucking dreaming about the cunt now.

  Do you want that renewed? I ask.

  Yeah, mate. He brightens suddenly, pointing a finger. And do you know what else I want, geez? Deseamos un régimen democrático. We want a democratic regime. See, Miss? Clearly pleased with himself, he taps his temple with the same forefinger. All going in nice. Good teacher, that Kate.

  Miss Thistle to you, please, Kate replies.

  Peel’s face is a squashed meringue of confusion. Nah, Miss. Teacher Kate is a good teacher, is what I’m saying. Cheers, Alfie. Ándale!

  I have stamped his book. Miss Patterson has returned.

  And at first I’m disappointed not to have enough time to remark on the coincidence of forenames—a third Kate, me still smiting from being a displaced Billy—but then I realise that it hardly needs mentioning. Everything else is fucked. We do not speak—we do not have the chance to speak— for nearly another hour, and even then it is as part of my tea- making duties. I am afraid that Movements will take me back to my pad before I can talk properly. Fortunately, when the guys from the I.T. class are in for their browsing session, one of them—whose name I don’t know—somehow manages to discredit the honour of another yoot’s country of origin. Additionally fortunately, they both had pens in their hands at the time—to order their softcore bash—and so the resulting conflict is as bad as I need it to be.

  Miss Patterson thumbs the green button and the radios whistle and whine.

  In come the desperados! The fight is eventfully dispersed (one of the screws gets a new biro tattoo above the wide left wing of his ridiculous moustache) and when the reinforcements arrive, the other yoots are escorted back to their Computer Literacy textbooks and flickering screens. Miss Patterson—it seems—could do with a nice lie down. Well, it seems as though she might go for a swig of her own hidden hooch, but as that is not an option she repairs once again for the Ladies Room downstairs.