by David Mathew
Nine.
Dear Miss Wollington,
Allow me, if you would, a brief moment of disrespect; but shall we cut to the chase? Shall we? You now know everything about me you need to know, and yet I know so very little about you. I have tried my best to be honest throughout, scrabbling around for memories the size of dust particles sometimes; because you asked me nicely and you said I would reap the benefits. With all due respect, Miss—when? Where’re them benefits? In your office that night, when you were playing classical music and I was pretending to have a bellyache? Did you know I was coming? You appeared composed—dare I say it, even flattered I’d swing by. Or at least that’s how I recall it when I’m here, away from it. How many memories, though still, do we cheat ourselves on? It’s like that old philosophical thing about colours, innit? How do we know we all see the same colour? My blue could be your gold, vice versa. But how I remember it is this: you said you’d help me. If I tell you everything, you will help me. We sign a contract, though still. Well, you now know everything I can think of. Your turn. I have referred to you in the third person throughout but there’s a reason for this, I’m sure; I can’t quite put my finger on what that might be but I know there was one. Easy, it would be easy to ask you—I’m sure you know yourself—if you ever have me over to the Health Care rooms again. When’s my next appointment? When do you want to see me? Do you want to see me? Some days, Miss, I am not even certain you exist. Have you left the prison? If so, can someone reading these words please put on file I need a new Psychologist assigned. And if you’ve left, Miss Wollington—Kate, you said I can call you Kate—I wish you’d said summing. While I’m not claiming I went through this only for you, I did do so a bit.
Hit me back when you get a chance, please?
ALFRETH, WILLIAM.
Ten.
The words I apparently mumble before I wake fully are these: I live with failure. Then I’m spluttering—spluttering like that time I drank methylated spirits for a dare. I don’t know who might have dared me to do such a thing, but I know it happened, way back when, when the past meant the past and it was something to run from frightened. And then it was something to ignore.
Don’t try to sit up, son, I’m told.
The face is kindly, unfamiliar, lightly bearded not through style sensibility but through personal neglect caused by overwork. He is wearing a white lab coat; he’s a doctor.
Where am I?
Hospital. You inhaled a lot of smoke, he tells me.
I also took on a lot of physical abuse, as I recall, but I hold my tongue on the subject. I let my pains find me again; they scurry home hard to my bones. Is the riot over? In what shape have I left Dellacotte YOI. I cough again, noting I’ve been cuffed to a hospital bed.
How’s Dott? I ask.
Who’s she?
Ronald Dott.
I don’t know, mate, the doctor replies. We’ve had a lot of you guys in here this morning. What started the riot? he asks candidly, wide-eyed.
It’s about time. Allow it.
Giving up on me for the moment, the doctor orders me to rest, informing me further I’ll be free to go shortly; there’s nothing serious wrong. But there is, I want to tell him, closing my eyes again. I don’t know if Dott is really dead. I don’t know if I helped carry him far enough back, to a place and time that’s before his own possibilities for future life. How can I tell? And who else can I tell any of this to either? The answer is Kate. Kate Thistle, of course.
I strike a deal with myself not to cough anymore, whether or not the effort makes my eyes bulge and bleed. I want to show I am fit; I am healthy enough to return to the nick. But is there any nick to go back to? Next time I wake, I’m more aware, not only of my surroundings, but of my senses: the taste of smoke on my tongue; an undeniable shoving sensation against my kidneys; and a body-high, body-wide series of relayed pains and twinges. My gut rot kicks in again, more welcome than any of these later additions, and I treat it as I would an old friend.
Too late, Billy. Can’t you see? It was always too late.
I hope I’ve assisted him to the place he wants to go— which is no place. No place at all; an anti-place. I hope I’ve been his passport to banality, to emptiness—to the negative. Thinking these thoughts, I sit up. Where am I? Hospital, I’ve been told, but I’ve not been given a room and the cupboard in which I’ve been left resembles nothing like a hospital that I know. A cupboard? A broom cupboard to boot. If not for the shackles on each wrist, securing me to the metal sidebars of the bed, I might well pick up a broom or a mop and use it as a weapon to get the hell out. The fact the light has been left on—a bare bulb burning above me—is not much of a consolation. Apparently I’m not worth any more than detergent. Hospital? The town of Hospital? Suddenly I’m scared again. Have I not made it back to where I started? Scratch that. Have I not made it back to where I started the previous day? When I shout out for help my throat tells me off; it is raw and aching, and utterly, totally dry. For the sake of continuity—continuity of my mental faculties—it’s quite a relief when the same doctor that consulted with me before now opens the door.
Are you all right, young man? he asks.
Apart from being locked in a fucking cupboard? Yeah, I’m peachy, mate, I retaliate. Any of the screws here? The prison officers?
Oh, one or two.
Well, can I speak to one, please?
I think they’re all being treated, the ones that’re here.
Treated?
In all my years, I’ve never seen a late shift like this, the doctor continues, shaking his head—even raising one hand to run sausage fingers through his dark, sweaty hair.
Why, what’s happened?
Full-scale riot, young man.
Oh, that.
Yes, that. Tell me: how did they get the keys?
Who?
The prisoners.
My mind catches up and joins the dots, but it’s not as fast as I want it to be—not as fast as I’ve been in the past. I say:
Excuse me?
At least one prison officer lost his keys, in a tête-à- tête, shall we say? Went round releasing some of the other prisoners. Never seen anything like it. Several times he shakes his head; then he reacquaints himself with the old bedside manner, and his voice becomes more clipped. All beds are full. So are most of the corridors and waiting rooms. I shouldn’t say this, but this could be a time bomb.
Jesus. You mean there are yoots out there without screws to look after them?
The police force’s in. The army’s in, says the doctor. What I’ll do is try to find someone in charge and suggest you’re fit to go back, if there’s anyone to take you back. We need all the space we can get, to tell you the truth, and you’ve got nothing that can’t wait.Talk about a stretch of resources! What started the riot? he asks me for the second time
I invent a total lie for the doctor to start spreading around on his coffee breaks.
Some of the lads got tired of being raped by the prison officers. That sort of thing can’t be allowed to carry on.
The doctor makes a face. He’ll be my town crier. For now he doesn’t know what to say, but he adds: That’s the best I can do for you, right now. I’ll be back to check on you in a bit.
Doctor! There’s one other thing!
What is it?
Bit embarrassing, doctor, I tell him, but I really, really need a piss.
I’ll ask a nurse to bring you a bedpan.
Thanks. And just one more thing before you go. Could you turn off the light, please? I’m getting a suntan in this box: bulb’s too bright.
Certainly. Sorry. Will you be okay? Shall I leave the door open?
I’ll be fine. I like the noise of activity, I answer candidly.
The doctor sniffs his mild amusement. Well, that’s one way of putting it, he tells me. I have to ask you one thing, you
ng man—call it professional curiosity, but I don’t see it very often. You’re between eighteen and twenty-one, right, to be a prisoner at Dellacotte?
Yeah, I’m twenty, I tell him.
What age were you when your hair turned white? he asks.
There’ll be no clues, will there? I’ll never know if Dott made it back beyond the starting line, or if he’s merely settled once more into the traps, to run the race another time. Poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again. Loathsome old Dott. Where is Kate Thistle when I need her? Where’s my visit?
What time is it? I ask one of the three screws in the meat wagon.
Two other yoots and I are on our way back to the dreary walls and the stagnation. We’ve been assigned an officer each. All three of us are in cuffs—standard—and we’ve been pronounced fit enough to return to duties; the screws have their batons drawn, even though we are low risk prisoners, otherwise we wouldn’t be in the same vehicle at the same time. No one is taking any chances. The screw’s name is Vincent: the woman from the Visits Room. She tells me, Two, but I’m so discombobulated I add: Afternoon or morning?
It’s light outside, Alfreth. It’s the afternoon, she answers, puzzled.
Thanks.
One of the other YOs has a name like Markwell or Maxwell, or something like that. I only know him by sight— he’s a regular fixture in the Library on Thursdays, when C Wing gets its trip to borrow books.
Yo, Redband! he says.
Wogwun, blood?
Do you remember much about last night? It’s all a blur for me.
Remember bits, I fib. You know how it started?
No idea, cuz. One minute I’m bashing one out.
Thank you, Marwell, says Vincent, nice image for us all.
The next, shit’s sticking to the wall, cuz.
Allow it. Miss? Do you think there’s any chance of normal duties today, Miss? I’ve got some important stuff to clear up in the Library.
I very much doubt it, Alfreth. You’ll be part of the cleaning detail.
Marwell has an opinion on this verdict. Fuck that shit, Miss, he says.
Mind your language, son, says one of the other screws.
I think he’s the one who sits in the mosque, looking bored, when we do Friday prayers. Well, not me; when the lads who do Friday prayers do Friday prayers.
I will clean my own cell, sir, Marwell continues, but I am not cleaning up another man’s shit. That’s unfuckingdignified, man!
And don’t call me man either! You’ll do what we say.
We’ll see about that. Sir. There’s only so many cells in the Seg, sir.
Your own cells are gonna be worse than the Seg cells for a little while. The screw—is it Simmons?—now smiles. I’m not even certain your cells are safe anymore. Facing facts for a sec, I’m not sure what we’re doing is legal.
I can see the future clearly. Twenty-four-seven bang up. No appointments, no visits, no Education, no Library, and no Movements. One unlocked at a time to collect a meal. Cold food. One shower a week. Body odour and a rising sense of compound rage. They will punish us for what has happened— for what Dott’s done. But where is Dott now? Has he also been released from the hospital? Has he vanished from the hospital? If I ask the screws in the butcher’s van, here, I’ll raise suspicion. I ride the rest of the journey in silence, wishing for a window to look out of. Rather than see the hills we climb, I feel them in the extra efforts of the vehicle itself—as the driver in the cab up front drops down a gear and then another to bust the incline. When we stop at the front gates, I can smell the place. It smells of hatred.
With my newfound trust in the positive aspects of not keeping time, I have no idea how long passes before the YOI is on track to some semblance of normality. My thoughts, in the meanwhile, are proved correct: we are kept locked up. Nothing happens; days die. Scarcely do I notice them go and I don’t attend their funerals. I lie on my bed and think of what has occurred. I talk to no one, and no one talks to me. There are no Association sessions; no games to play; no gambling to win at or lose; no hot water. There’s no right to a phone call, or an appointment with a Wing representative, or the Prisoner Council; there’s no TV. There is no electricity after the fall of darkness. No response to a night bell. There is no Canteen—no extra crisps or choccies at our own expense. There are no shop Movements.
There is bedlam. Protestive acts are commonplace, even boring, and continue unabated and are seldom challenged by the screws. What’s the game? What’s the intention? That those routinely responsible will burn themselves and burn their anger out? These screws have got a long, long wait; but haven’t we all? So I lie down on the bed or on the floor, reading nothing, composing the few letters I must write; and I wait for something from Dott. Meanness makes me feel stronger. I hope he’s beginning his journey from old age to youth once again. I hope what happened in the desert failed. I will not need to face him another time in my span on earth. Maybe the next time that I go around, circumstances will paint another picture. But I won’t remember any of this, and there’s nothing I can do about times to come.
Because I’ve kept my cell clean since rebounding back to Dellacotte, I am eventually allowed back to my job in the Library, where I promptly resign on my first day of duty, with a smile and a handwritten note. Miss Patterson is displeased: she thinks I’m the best Library Redband she’s had working for her in the last decade of her time in the prison. For these words I thank her warmly, and then wish she’ll leave the room so I can talk to Kate. It takes till nearly the end of second Movements before I can speak to her alone. I am as certain of what she’ll say as I am of my decision to leave this job. She will tell me she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. She will tell me I recite a good story, a good yarn; she will ask if I’ll put the kettle on. And why do I think this? Because I’ve made a few points of detection: I have checked the long wooden box in which are kept the borrowing cards of all the yoots who’ve signed up with the Library. There is no card for ‘Dott, Ronald’ and when I’ve mentioned his name a few times, in passing—and only with screws—there’s a blankness about the face, a twitch of the shoulders. Perhaps I’ve killed him before he’s born. If I have, he’s never been here—been to jail or been to England—if I’ve got that correct. I’m not sure. I’ll wait for signs.
Hit me back, Dott.
I will try to read humour in the eyes of Kate Thistle—when she’s quizzing me over, asking me to decode and decipher rougher nuggets of slang she’s found within these walls. I will help her. I’m a good boy. But I’m leaving the Library, I tell her. After that she will need a new translator. Or alternatively, she can find me—elsewhere in the prison. I won’t be far away. Promise. I’ve got plenty of time to exhaust.
— THE END —
David Mathew is the author of two previous novels, Ventriloquists (Montag Press) and Creature Feature with M.F. Korn (Post Mortem Press) and Paranoid Landscapes, a volume of short stories. Born in Bedfordshire, England, David has travelled widely, working in a variety of countries. He has since returned and lives in Bedfordshire once again. As a researcher and technical writer, David publishes academic work and focuses on developments in education, health and psychoanalysis.
