Billy Rags

by Ted Lewis

  “So,” I said. “Now you’re leading a baron’s life.”

  “It’s different in Security. Not like the other wings. Less of a hassle to make your points. There’s no petty stuff. All big fish together. Who wants to prove anything? We wouldn’t be here in the first place, would we?”

  “You’d call Strachey and Hopper and Rose big fish, would you?”

  “We never see them, so consequently we never think about them.”

  “I hope we never do,” I said. “I don’t want to have to go back behind my door because of that filth.”

  “You know, Billy,” Walter said, “that’s always been your trouble. If you don’t mind me saying so. You’re always on the boil. Never know how to relax. Never been able to sit back and accept things.”

  “And that’s what you’re going to do, is it, Walter?” I said. “Sit back and accept things? For the next twenty-five fucking years?”

  Walter didn’t like that one. He raised himself up on his elbows.

  “Do you know where you are, Billy?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, there it is. I can’t be plainer, can I?”

  “You mean to say that with all your bread and influence you’re calling this place the end of the line?”

  He shrugged.

  I looked at him.

  “Do me a favour,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything. I picked up the magazine from his bed.

  “Lend us your Playboy, Wally,” I said. “After all, you’ve got plenty of time in front of you to finish it.”

  “Cracken.”

  Soft shafts of afternoon sunlight slide through the slow swirling chalk dust in the quiet classroom.

  I pretend not to hear Copley’s voice. Johnny Stretch and the others begin to buzz at the prospect of a Cracken diversion.

  “Cracken? Somebody pinch him, will you, just to make sure he’s still with us.”

  Copley always tries to turn this kind of thing into a joke if he thinks it’s going to get out of hand. He’s one of the easiest of the lot to play up.

  The buzzing gets a little louder.

  “Quieten down, class” he says.

  I stay as I am, hunched forward over my desk as if I’m concentrating on my book. The class goes quiet again. Copley is forced to walk down the aisle of desks to where I am sitting. I take no notice of him.

  “Cracken?”

  I sit bolt upright in my chair, nearly causing my desk to topple over, acting as though I’ve been startled out of my wits. The class bursts out laughing. Copley steps back a foot or two in surprise.

  “Yes sir, sorry sir,” I say, like a soldier on parade.

  Copley tries to recover his poise.

  “Cracken, I was attempting to communicate with you. But somehow I didn’t seem to be meeting with much success. Do you think you could explain why?”

  “Pardon, sir?”

  “Why didn’t you answer?”

  “Sorry, sir, I can’t hear you very well. You haven’t lost your voice have you, sir?”

  Copley is on the verge of fetching me one but he manages to restrain himself.

  “Out to the front of the class, boy,” he says in what he imagines to be his no-nonsense voice.

  “Sorry, sir,” I says, wrapping my handkerchief round my finger and wriggling it about in my ear. “I think I’ve gone deaf.”

  This is too much even for Copley. He grabs my arm and drags me to the front of the class and with his free hand he scrambles his wooden ruler out of the drawer in his desk. He moves his grip down to my wrist and holds my hand out in front of me.

  “Now, boy,” he says, “we’ll see if this won’t improve your hearing.”

  But as he swishes the ruler down I jerk my hand out of the way, not only causing him to miss but also to overbalance slightly, so that he has to let go of my hand to steady himself on the edge of his desk.

  “Sorry, sir,” I say. “My hand slipped.”

  The class roars with laughter.

  “Quiet!” shouts Copley.

  “Won’t let it happen again, sir.”

  Copley grasps my hand again and furiously brings the ruler down seven or eight times, completely out of control, haphazardly hitting my knuckles, fingers, wrist, anywhere. But I make his lack of control even more unbearable for him because all the while he is raining blows on me I just keep looking him straight in the eyes and smiling as though he’s not having any effect on me at all.

  When Moffatt and his assistant Creasey took over you could hardly say the earth shook. Nothing changed and nobody took much notice of them. But I sensed that Moffatt was watching us and most of what he saw he didn’t like. I was on to his game straight away; he was giving it a week or two to sort us out and after that we could expect a few new rules to stop life from becoming one long dreary round.

  I found out about the first innovation one night while I was working out with the weights. The gym was empty until Terry Beckley, who was on a fifteen for armed robbery, came in and squatted down on a barbell and watched me for a while.

  Terry was twenty-two. I’d got his form from a mate of mine while I’d been outside. He was one of those characters who always seem to have some private joke going on inside their heads. Whenever you bump into them they always look as though they’ve just seen something very funny and you always have the feeling that when you say something to them it reminds them of what they were laughing at in the first place. But this mate of mine who’d known him on the outside had been full of bad news about him. He’d once seen Terry do his pieces on an old billiard hall cowboy called Harold Pearson just because Harold had tried to save the game by accidentally-on-purpose moving the pink to get a better angle. Now, according to my mate, Terry wasn’t exactly short of a bob or two at the time and Harold whose eyes for the game were no longer as good as they should be, and not being a superannuated man, was reduced in his old age to living off the leftovers at the all night pie-stands. But on the occasion of his tournament with Terry he must have thought he was in luck because apparently even a blind man playing with an eel for a cue could have beaten him.

  But Harold hadn’t been able to resist brushing a cuff against the pink and Terry had taken him apart and finished up by putting Harold’s fingers on the edge of the table and giving them one with the stick.

  But tonight Terry was his usual grinning self.

  “What is it, Billy?” he said. “Planning to walk through the walls? Like Superman?”

  I let the weights go and picked up my towel and draped it round my shoulders.

  “You’ve got muscles on your muscles,” he said.

  “Never know when you might need them,” I said. “Got a snout?”

  “Naw,” he said. “Right out. Got some news, though.”

  “News?”

  “There’s something else to look at in the TV room.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Moffatt’s invited Hopper and Rose out to watch TV.”

  I stared at him.

  “You’re joking,” I said.

  “Rose had more sense,” Terry said, “but Hopper’s out there now, looking for a friendly face. Course, with Strachey, it’s different. He’s going to be allowed to see Watch with Mother during the day.”

  “How long’s Hopper been up there?”

  “Bout an hour.”

  “And nobody copped for him?”

  Terry shook his head.

  “Well, I hope they have before I get up there,” I said. “Otherwise I might wind up behind my door again.”

  I went into the shower and ran it cold. I thought about Hopper. Just Terry saying his name had been enough to tie my stomach up in knots.

  I’d been in the nick at the time he’d made the papers. Usually
I avoided reading stuff like that, but this I’d read and I’d been shocked to tears, the kind of tears that pop out of your ducts when grief chills the skin on your face. The bit that had affected me really badly had been the part where the father of one of the kids had found his own daughter where Hopper had left her. I could imagine myself standing over the body, looking down at what Hopper had done to it, done to something that had once belonged to me.

  I toweled myself down and dressed and walked upstairs to the TV room.

  I stood in the doorway and looked round the room.

  Hopper was sitting near the door with his screw, well apart from the rest of them. The others, eleven or so of them, were sitting in a semi-circle around the room. Everybody was watching TV as though they’d never seen it before. Not one of them was cracking on to Hopper. It was as if he wasn’t there. Maybe they were ignoring him because none of them wanted to go behind their doors. Or because just to acknowledge his presence would make them sick to their stomachs. But whatever the reasons I wasn’t standing for this. I looked at Hopper who was staring hard at the box. He didn’t look more than seventeen, let alone twenty, with his fair hair brushed straight back and his bony cheeks and the straggly bumfluff along his top lip he looked like something out of a sepia photograph around 1914. He was sitting bolt upright, his hands gripping his kneecaps.

  The only person who’d cracked on to my being in the doorway was Terry Beckley, who’d fixed himself up with a place next to the TV set so that he’d have a good view of my entrance.

  “Turn it off, Terry,” I said. “He’s not watching that.”

  Terry was well pleased to do something. He promptly stood up and turned it off and grinned his grin in Hopper’s direction.

  The room was so quiet it could have been empty. Everybody was looking at Hopper. I began to wind them up.

  “You got any kids, Tommy?” I said to Tommy Dugdale. Tommy inclined his head slightly and massaged his bald spot with the flat of his hand.

  “Yeah, Billy,” Tommy said. “I got a little girl.”

  “What sort of age is she, Tommy?”

  “She’ll be nine next birthday.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. “Nine. Nice age is that.”

  “Pretty little thing, she is,” Tommy said. “Golden curly hair. She really loves her terrible old daddy.”

  “I bet she does.”

  “Don’t know what I’d do if anything was to happen to her.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  I turned to Dave Simmons.

  “What about you, Dave?” I said. “You’ve got a couple, haven’t you?”

  “That’s right, Billy. Twins. Little crackers they are.” He fished a small leather envelope out of his breast pocket. “Did I ever show you the snaps?”

  “Don’t think you did, Dave,” I said, walking over to him. I stood behind his chair and bent over him.

  “That’s outside the house with the missus,” Dave said, handing me a photograph. “And this one’s at Margate with their Auntie Annie. They had a week there last year.”

  “Nice,” I said. “You seen these, Terry?”

  Terry joined me behind Dave’s chair.

  “Charmers,” Terry said. “Aren’t they, Billy?”

  I looked across at Hopper.

  “Just his type, I would have thought,” I said.

  “Bit old for him,” said Ray Crompton. “Too much for him to handle.”

  “Probably prefers them with nappies on,” said George Hodge.

  “Do you like them in nappies?” said Des Walker.

  “Lovely feller, really,” said Terry.

  “A charmer.”

  “Just loves kiddies.”

  “Do anything for them.”

  “To them.”

  “Which bit do you like best? Before or after?”

  “Or in between?”

  “The bit with the bayonet, I should think.”

  “When they’re crying for their mummies.”

  “They should have given him to the father.”

  “They should have cut his fucking balls off.”

  “Maybe somebody will.”

  Hopper’s face had gone the colour of ice cream and his head was flicking from speaker to speaker like the swivel head on a ventriloquist’s dummy. Everybody was worked up ready to explode. It was written all over their faces. I was waiting for somebody to trip it so that I could screw the first two knuckles of my fist into Hopper’s neck.

  While everybody had been calling out, the screw had stood up and put himself between Hopper and the rest of us, but now there was fear on his face because he knew that once we moved there would be absolutely nothing at all that he could do to stop us.

  One or two of the boys made movements as if they were about to stand up. The screw said: “Out, Hopper. Back to your cell.”

  Hopper stood up as though he was on strings and ran out of the room.

  “He’s crying,” somebody said. “The rotten little bastard’s crying.”

  The screw gave us as long a look as he dared and then followed after Hopper.

  “Fuck it,” I said, belting the back of Tommy Dugdale’s chair.

  “Billy, that was a victory,” said Benny Beauty. “No one got nicked. Gordon will be sick about the whole thing.”

  “We should have had him,” I said. “We will next time.”

  “Once, when I was in Leicester,” said Ray Crompton, “there was a feller called Cliff Reid who was down for it, and so what everybody did was to fill up their mugs from the tea-room boiler and they let him have it that way.”

  “Here, that’s not half bad,” said Terry. “That’s a little beauty.”

  “If we were to do that,” I said, “everybody would have to be in on it. Nobody not carrying a mug.”

  “What about the lads down on the Twos?” said Ray. “Are they in?”

  The Twos were well pleased it wasn’t on their plate. You could tell. There was an atmosphere of wary elation about them, like frightened kids in a classroom when only one of them was responsible for putting the tintack on teacher’s seat but knowing that they’d all cop for it in the end.

  I wandered down to the Twos during the day and the only one who openly committed himself to the plan was Walter, who was a bit of a Twos denizen. I had my own ideas about that one: knowing Walter, he’d sussed that he didn’t have to push so hard on the Twos as he would on the Threes. There were more starry eyes downstairs.

  “So it’s the all off tonight, Billy,” Walter said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Coming up are you, Walter?”

  “I’ll be there,” he said.

  “Anybody else?”

  “Everybody likes the idea.”

  “So?”

  “You never know.”

  “I do,” I said.

  Walter folded up the newspaper he’d been reading and leant forward, looking me in the face. The usual limpness had gone. The skin on his face was stretched tighter over his skull.

  “Listen, Billy,” he said. “You know what would be better?”

  “Tell me, Walter?”

  “Not boiling water: boiling fat,” he said. “It clings.”

  He clawed his hands across his face in imitation of the effect his idea would have. He was really living the part.

  “Oh, that’s lovely, Wally,” I chivvied. “And we’ll all end up with another five apiece. It’s like saying I haven’t got enough bird, please give me some more.”

  Walter relaxed again.

  “What’s the difference?” he said. “We won’t exactly get a weekend in Brighton for the water.”

  Oh, so you’ve considered that one, I thought. I wonder if we will be seeing you tonight, Walter.

  I
got up and left him on the Twos.

  That night there were no weights. All the Threes men came out holding their mugs like testimonials of intent. Everybody took their places in the TV room and waited. Three-quarters of an hour later and there was no sign of Hopper.

  Benny Beauty said: “Maybe he’s had the sense to stay behind his door.”

  I shook my head.

  “Maybe he has but not Moffatt,” I said. “I’m on to him. He’s not going to be beat in his first week. He’ll have Hopper down here even if he has to parcel him up.”

  We waited some more. Nothing happened. Then about eight o’clock Sammy Chopping from off the Twos stuck his head round the TV room door.

  “Hopper’s on the Twos,” he said. “They’ve fetched him in there.”

  “So why tell us?” I said. “What the fuck are they doing about it down there?”

  “I dunno,” said Sammy.

  “Fuck all, that’s what,” I said, getting up. “I knew those sods would chicken out.”

  I could tell everybody was pleased at seeing the ball out of their court and that not one of them wanted to make it down on the Twos so I cleared off down there on my own.

  Both TV rooms were situated on the outside corner of the L, one below the other. I walked past the door of the Twos’ room. The room was empty except for Hopper and his screw.

  I went straight to Walter’s cell. There were about five of them in there muttering about it. I stood in the doorway.

  “What’s happening, then?” I said.

  Everybody except for Walter looked a bit sheepish.

  Walter said: “We’re just working out the best way of approaching it.”

  He didn’t like it. It was written all over his face. He didn’t like the new boy coming down to his floor and embarrassing him in front of his little enclave, making him look a chicken for not being first in with a mug.

  “What’s to work out?” I said. “You just go in and you do it.”

  One of them said: “It’s not that easy.”

  “Listen,” I said. “None of you cunts offered to come upstairs and help us, did you? Not when you thought you’d get away without being in it. So now it’s down here, and it’s all yours. Boiling water in the boat.”

  “At the same time, Billy,” said Walter, liking it less and less, “I don’t see anybody from the Threes funneling down here.”