The Star Witness

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The Star Witness Page 20

by Andy Hamilton


  “Yeh, but the audience can be small. Very small if you like.”

  I notice that Albie is getting fidgety. Simo also seems a little agitated.

  “Like— y’know, the— I mean— what…”

  “What could we do?” I prompt.

  “Yeh.”

  “Whatever we can agree on.”

  “No plays,” says Mohammad. “And no Christian shit.”

  “We can keep religion out of it. We could write a piece of our own if you like.”

  There is a rapid ripple of head-shaking, “that sounds like a lot of work” seems to be the consensus.

  “Alright then, we can do excerpts from things.”

  “Not Shakespeare,” says Dougie. “Too much to learn.”

  I begin to wonder if I should have started down this road. I had forgotten how lazy criminals are. That’s how most of them end up as criminals, they can’t resist a short-cut.

  Gerald, languid as ever, raises a finger.

  “Small point. I think it’s futile for us to attempt anything that involves too much co-operation.”

  “A show made up of solo pieces, then. Y’know, Dougie, you could do that song from My Fair Lady that you like, and maybe even a bit of a scene from it. Pulse, you could do a rap or—”

  “Oh right, I’m black, so I do a rap, is that it?”

  “No, I—”

  “The black boy better not attempt nothing that’s not black.”

  “That was just an ex—”

  “Maybe I’ll do some Pinter”

  “Pinter?”

  “Yuh, why not? I can do pausing, there’s a lot of pausing, isn’t there, I can do that.”

  “Which Pinter piece do you think you’d like to do, Pulse?”

  “I dunno, I’ll have to read some first.”

  I back off. Mohammad wades in.

  “I could act out the story of how the Israelis faked 9/11.”

  Dougie mutters something ominous.

  “Historical’s good,” I say, trying not to sound patronising, “but maybe that’s a little…y’know…”

  “It’s anti-Semitic,” says Gerald.

  “And bollocks.” adds Dougie.

  “Or schmollocks, as you Jews say.” Mohammad giggles, he’s pleased with that.

  “I’m not Jewish, you little cunt.” Dougie takes a step towards Mohammad and I yell the first thing that comes into my head.

  “Dance! There’s always dance! It’s a good medium…for people who can move. Simo, I’ve seen you throwing some shapes.”

  He sets off around the room, kick-boxing invisible opponents.

  “What about some pieces based on personal experience? Stories from people’s childhoods, stuff like that.”

  Albie is staring at the floor, looking paler than ever.

  “Albie? Are you in?”

  “None of us are ‘in’,” drawls Gerald, “we haven’t taken a vote on it yet, beloved leader. Or hadn’t you noticed yet?”

  I sense that now is not the time to force it. “Why don’t we all take a day or two to think it over?” I propose.

  “I’m not doing no rap,” mutters Pulse.

  When we take the vote a few days later, the mood has swung significantly in favour of doing some kind of performance. There are a few provisos. Nobody wants an audience of more than forty prisoners and Dougie insists that it can’t include any terrorists or paedos.

  The only person who makes no contribution to the discussion is Albie, who sits to one side, flicking imaginary nuisances away from his face.

  “You’re very quiet, Paul.”

  He just shrugs.

  “Do you fancy doing a show?” I ask.

  “If people want to, that’s fine. I’ll watch.”

  “That seems a shame.”

  “I’m…I’m not…I can’t perform…not in front of…sorry.”

  “I could do something with you, maybe…if that’s any help.”

  “I’m no good at acting.” He is pulling at one of his eyebrows now, as if it is annoying him.

  “Can you sing?”

  He leaves his eyebrow alone and looks at me. Well, nearly at me.

  “…Erm…I used to.”

  “Used to?”

  “Before—” He stops himself “Before all this. I was in the church choir.”

  “Oh…right.”

  Mohammad says something about how churches will all be gone soon, but nobody bothers to listen.

  “Well you could sing in the show, that’d be fine.”

  “I…I don’t sing now.”

  “Why not?”

  “…I never feel like it.”

  He is clamming shut again, so I take a gamble.

  “What’s your favourite hymn?”

  “…Sorry?”

  “When you were in the choir, what was your favourite hymn?”

  “Erm…‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’.”

  Mohammad kicks off about how Allah is the one true God, until Pulse and Dougie tell him he’s about to have his jaw broken.

  “Let’s sing it now…you and me.”

  Albie is looking straight at me – direct eye contact.This is a first. “Come on, you and me…I’ll start if you like…see how much of it I can remember.”

  With Albie watching me, transfixed, I launch into the first verse, singing firmly but not too loud, so that he’ll feel free to join in. But it doesn’t seem to be working. I am already through the first verse and he is just standing, frozen to the spot.

  Then, as I begin the line, “Drop thy still dews of quietness”, Albie lifts his head and begins to sing. As we complete the next line – “Till all thy strivings cease” – I peter to a halt, because Albie has one of the most beautiful male voices I have ever heard. It’s a light, effortless liquid tenor that is slowly filling the room. And he looks like a different person. He’s no longer that sickly ghost, he’s standing tall, with his chest out, and his face illuminated by expression; he is transported.

  He doesn’t seem to notice that I’m no longer singing, nor that hardened criminals are staring at him rapt in wonder. Even Gerald is impressed, nodding, with his eyebrows raised in acknowledgement of that talent, pure talent, that makes you feel enriched and inadequate at the same time. As Albie reaches the section about letting sense be dumb and flesh retire, you can feel the electricity in the room. Then he drops to pianissimo for the final couplet of “O still, small voice of calm” and it’s as if he is casting a spell.

  As the last note is still shimmering through the air, Albie breaks into an awkward little smile. There is an awed silence; grown men, struck dumb.

  “Fuck me, Albie,” says Dougie, “have you swallowed an angel?”

  Albie laughs – genuinely laughs!

  “How long since you last sang?” I ask.

  “Dunno…long…long time.”

  Pulse shakes his head. “That’s a terrible waste, man. Terrible, terrible waste.” Simo steps forward and tries to congratulate Albie, but the emotion scrambles his words and thoughts too much. I hold Albie by both shoulders.

  “Has no one ever told you you’ve got a beautiful voice?”

  He shrugs. “When I was little maybe.”

  “What about at school?”

  “Erm…I went to special school…they only seemed bothered about all the things I couldn’t do.”

  “Well take it from me, from us, you’ve got an exceptional voice, you’ve got to do something in the show, please.”

  He thinks for a few moments.

  “Do I have to do a hymn?”

  “You sing whatever you fucking like, fella,” Dougie chuckles. “Fucking opera, fucking show tunes…”

  Albie stares at the floor for a few moments.

  “I…I quite like the Everly Brothers.”

  “I fucking love the Everly Brothers!” exclaims Dougie.

  “…my dad used to sing them.”

  “So did mine!”

  “Then do an Everly Brothers song, Albie,” I urge him. I�
��m patting his shoulders now. “That’d be brilliant.”

  But then he starts to shrink.

  “I dunno…me in front of other people, I…” The face-flicking has started again, “Best not, I think.”

  I can’t let him fade away, not now, I hunt for a solution.

  “How about a duet?”

  The prison psychiatrist remained keen for us to continue our sessions. I had managed to use the Drama Group as an excuse for a couple of weeks, but, in the end, I calculated that I would give less cause for concern if I just bit the bullet and went to see him. Part of me still worried, I suppose, that he might have me down as a psychopath.

  The session is very like the others. He asks questions – most of them fatuous – while he plays with his hair. But, gradually, I realise that something has changed. When he runs his fingers through his locks, I am no longer experiencing any inner rage. Previously, I would be directing mental heckles at him all the time, little spits of hatred, but now he isn’t getting to me at all. I don’t feel warm towards him, but I no longer want to smash his head against the wall. I feel calm, and although his questions seem no more intelligent than before, I find that I’m not so sensitised to them.

  “Do you like yourself?” he asks, out of nowhere.

  “’Like’ myself?”

  “Yes, would you say you like yourself?” “Erm…I…don’t ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ myself…I just…accept myself as a fact.”

  He bends down and fiddles with the laces of one of his desert boots.

  “As a fact?”

  “Yuh.”

  “Do you see yourself as a good person?”

  “No…no, I’m capable of being good…sometimes I am good, or can do good, but I also know that I’m very flawed and weak and unreliable.”

  “Bad?”

  “Sometimes, yes.”

  “Do you think you’re unfeeling?”

  I pause to choose my words.

  “That’s impossible for me to know, without knowing what other people feel. I’d need a comparison.”

  “That’s a careful answer.”

  “It’s an honest one.”

  “Do you see yourself as an honest person?”

  It would be ridiculous for me to answer “yes”, he is itching to mention that I’m a perjuror, I can sense it.

  “Clearly not”, I reply.

  “So, you lie.”

  “Yes.”

  “To yourself?”

  “Probably, but then we all do that to a certain extent, don’t we?” For a moment, I am very tempted to point out that his lustrous shock of hair looks like him lying to himself about his age, but then I let it go. There is no point being a smartarse today.

  “When was the last time you cried, Kevin?”

  I puff my cheeks and try to think back. I had felt moved when Albie started singing, but I hadn’t cried tears.

  “Actually cried?”

  “Actually cried”, he repeats.

  I had been upset during Sandra’s last visit, but I couldn’t remember weeping. When I do finally work out when it was, I let out an involuntary chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?” he asks.

  “Well…erm…the last time I cried actual tears was…um…lying in my bunk, thinking about someone who I barely knew and who I’d always regarded as a pain in the arse.”

  “Go on.”

  So, to my surprise, I tell him the whole story about Gavin, his death and how odd it felt to have been so upset.

  “Do you think you were crying for someone else?” he asks.

  “Probably.” I shrug. “It couldn’t have been for him, that would make no sense.”

  He stares out of the window for a few moments.

  “Your voice sounds different,” he tells me.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, not the same cut to it. Before, there was always an edge of…of latent aggression…like you wanted to smash my head in.”

  “Oh, right.” I laugh, in a way that I hope sounds relaxed. He laughs as well, but only to be sociable. A glance at his watch and then he hops to his feet.

  “I’ll leave the date of our next session up to you, Kevin”, he announces. “Just make an appointment if and when you feel the need.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “You’ve been a lot of help.”

  “Good,” he replies.

  He couldn’t spot a lie if it bit him on the nose.

  15

  The Group Decision

  It was an inspired idea. I know that sounds smug but I don’t care, it was inspired, the duet was the best idea I’d had in God knows how long.

  Albie and Dougie’s voices combined very well. Dougie’s solid, tuneful bass provided a good anchorage in the harmonies, while Albie’s voice…well it just kept getting better and better. Over the next few days, his confidence continued to grow.

  I managed to borrow a battered upright piano from the staff recreation room and a pianist, Norton, from ‘C’ Block. The others tell me he used to play for a Shirley Bassey tribute drag act. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about it. In fact, he barely talks at all. If the dueting continues to go well I might try to convince Albie he should do a solo.

  There are no doubts in my mind that their duet will be a showstopper. The only question is which song to choose. For their own amusement, they keep breaking into Everly Brothers numbers. Their rendition of “Let It Be Me” is outstanding, but Dougie makes it crystal clear that he is not singing any love-songs with another man, onstage, in front of people he will subsequently have to face at meal-times.

  “They’ll take the piss, I’ll lose it, it’ll end in fractures.” He informs me. “Then they’ll chuck me in the box and you could end up with a nutter for a room-mate.”

  I can see Gerald sniggering with his eyes.

  “Any suggestions for a song for Albie and Dougie?” I ask the group.

  Gerald suggests “Goldfinger”, but only to wind up Norton.

  “Du-ets. Think duets.”

  The suggestions start to come thick and fast.

  “‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’.”

  “‘I Know Him So Well’.”

  “‘No True Love Waits’.”

  “‘Close To You’.”

  “Dougie would prefer something non-romantic,” I remind them.

  “‘Ebony and Ivory’,” exclaims Pulse.

  Dougie scowls. “Not singing wet stuff about racial harmony. Also, I can’t stand McCartney, he held John Lennon back.”

  “‘It’s In His Kiss’?” offers Mohammad, but then he spots Dougie’s expression. “OK, sorry, no, forgot.”

  Norton mutters something that I don’t quite catch.

  “Sorry, Norton, what?”

  “‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’,” he monotones.

  “That’s not a bad idea. Boys?”

  Dougie is pulling a face. “I’m not a muso, but isn’t that fucking difficult?”

  “Albie will take the top line.”

  “Yeh, I know but—”

  “Albie, you up for that?”

  “Erm…yeh, think so.”

  “It’d make a great finale.”

  Dougie is still grimacing.

  “Tell you what, have a go with Norton, see how you get on. We can always find something else if you’re not happy.”

  I quickly clear out, taking the others to a side-room where we can go through their ideas for the show. To my surprise, Pulse wants to do an excerpt from Shakespeare.

  “Weren’t expecting that, eh, man?” he laughs. “Now there’s a bit of that lib-er-al discomfort going on.”

  “No, it’s great, really great, what bit where you thinking of?”

  “Macbeth.”

  “How much of Macbeth?”

  “Just the bit where they’ve told him that his bitch-wife is dead and he says that life is a story told by an idiot. ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’.”

  “Why did you choose that?”

  “Because it’ll sound great
in a Jamaican accent.”

  He’s right of course. But I’m still curious.

  “It must be more than that.”

  “I like the way he tells us everything is pointless. We’re born, we have our troubles, we die. He nails it.”

  “OK…um…it’s not that long a speech, do you want to do something else? Something more modern maybe, or something you write for yourself?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Simo tells me, eventually, that he’s expanding his dance idea.

  “How long’s it going to be?” I ask.

  His reply is a jerky fusillade of stops and starts, but from what I can gather it involves a polar bear. I decide to wait and see what he comes up with. Mohammad announces that he is writing some poetry that he intends to perform. And then I turn to Gerald, who is looking very pleased with himself. He has already written one piece that he’d like to do, in fact, he’s prepared to read it to us now. It turns out to be a twenty-minute dramatic monologue about an embezzler who is judged by his intellectual inferiors. I ask Gerald if he’s thinking of editing it down. He looks at me as if I am a curiosity in a museum.

  “Edit it down?”

  “Yes…just shorten it a bit.”

  “No, I don’t think so, every word is perfect.”

  * * *

  A few days later, with the show slowly beginning to take shape, I find myself back in the governor’s office. He seems genuinely thrilled that Albie has found his voice. He congratulates me repeatedly and tries to force-feed me biscuits.

  “Had to buy them with my own money. Go on, they’re buttery.”

  “No, I’m fine, honestly.”

  “Worrying about your figure?”

  “Not on prison food.”

  “We do the best we can for the money.”

  He reaches across the desk and picks up a letter.

  “I got a follow-up today from Going Forward Productions”

  I shift in my seat, not this again, I’ve said no.

  “I just wondered if you might have reconsidered at all,” he floats.

  “There’s nothing to reconsider. I’m not prepared to be filmed.”

  “Ah, right, so it’s still all about you then.”

  That’s not getting a response. I know what he’s up to. He leans forward, elbows on the desk.

  “What about the others? You’ve got prisoners who are going to recite Shakespeare, read out poems they’ve written, original work, you’ve got a virtual mute to sing…these men are making commitments, going out on a limb…backing themselves…don’t you feel it’d be good if the world saw that…saw that you don’t just give up on people…”

 

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