This Is How

by M. J. Hyland

‘I’ve no money for bail.’

  ‘That’s not for you to worry about.’

  It’s a short drive to the court, about five minutes, but everything out there looks better than it ever did. The white of the clouds, bright like snow, the green of the trees lush and thick like paint, a woman’s yellow umbrella shines like the sun.

  As soon as we arrive outside the courthouse, Davies takes me through a side-entrance and straight down to a holding cell. Darkness again, and dank, ashy air.

  Davies asks me to hold out my hands.

  ‘I’ve got to check your cuffs.’

  He checks that the chain’s not loosened or broken.

  ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘here’s where I leave you.’

  He doesn’t say anything else, just nods, turns, walks away.

  A copper opens the cell door.

  There’s no front wall, just a row of thick bars.

  ‘Get in,’ he says.

  There are six other men in the cell, all of them give me the once-over, then get back to their business. One of them leans against the right-hand wall and he’s eating a bar of chocolate. He eats it slowly, a kind of sucking. Another one’s sitting, reading a newspaper. Another one’s standing in the corner talking to himself, facing the wall, doing two voices.

  I go to the back left corner and sit.

  A few minutes later, the same copper comes.

  ‘Patrick James Oxtoby,’ he says. ‘You’re up.’

  The copper takes me out, up a flight of stairs, into the courtroom.

  The copper takes me into the wooden dock.

  ‘Stand here,’ he says.

  My brief sits on the other side of the aisle, turns to face me. He’s got grooming oil in his curly black hair.

  ‘We should be up next,’ he says.

  The magistrate announces my name and my brief goes forward.

  I’m standing between two coppers and one of them cuffs me to the rail.

  My brief goes to the table at the front and he says I’m pleading not guilty to murder and that we’re requesting bail.

  He sits.

  The charge sheet is read out by a court official who’s sitting below the magistrate, and the magistrate makes some notes.

  He asks me how I plead.

  ‘I’m not guilty,’ I say.

  ‘That’s fine, but how do you plead?’

  ‘Not guilty.’

  He makes another note and asks for the police statement and witness statements to be handed up.

  There’s only one statement: Bridget’s.

  He reads the statement and takes his time.

  Before he turns each page, he looks across at me, then back down.

  He’ll have to set me free on bail and first thing I’ll do is call home and explain to my mother what’s gone on and I’ll call Bridget and Georgia and then I’ll get on the next train home.

  The magistrate passes the statement back down to the court official.

  ‘I’m denying bail,’ he says.

  I’ve got a sick feeling, low and nervous in my gut, but not enough to spew.

  He doesn’t say why he’s denying bail. He says nothing more.

  My brief stands and tells the magistrate that I’m not a threat to the community and that this is my first and only criminal offence.

  The magistrate ignores him.

  ‘Patrick James Oxtoby,’ he says, ‘you’re to be remanded in custody until a trial date set by the Crown.’

  The magistrate asks for the next case to be called forward.

  My brief steps up to the dock.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I did what I could, but bail’s tricky with murder cases.’

  He did nothing.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Sure.’

  I’m taken by a copper down the steps to the holding cell.

  When we reach the cell door, I turn round to the officer.

  ‘This can’t be right,’ I say.

  ‘Get used to it,’ he says. ‘You’re about to be taken into remand.’

  ‘Where?'

  He tells me I’ll be transported to a high-security prison to await trial in a crown court. He tells me where.

  Both the prison and the court are in my home town.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I say. ‘Why do I have to go there?'

  ‘It’s the nearest high-security prison and it’s the nearest Crown court.’

  ‘But we’re a hundred miles away.’

  ‘It’s the nearest.’

  I know the courthouse well, used to pass it on the way to school, a big red-brick building with a big white statue of justice outside. Somebody once spray-painted fuck me across her tits and it took only two days for the paint to be cleaned off.

  ‘I’m going to be sick,’ I say.

  He says nothing, sends me back into the holding cell.

  I go straight to the left-hand corner and sit, pull my knees into my chest. The only other prisoner here is the one who was talking to himself earlier.

  My family might come to the trial, and they might not, and I don’t know which is worse, not to see them, or to see them because they think they’ve got no choice and because of the pity.

  In a situation like this, a man might be better off being an orphan, to not have personal witnesses. Right now there’s still a way for me to think none of it’s happened, that it might yet be undone, the facts reversed, that I might go back to where I was. But my family being around, seeing me, that’ll only go and make it real.

  ‘Fuck you,’ says the prisoner.

  He’s facing the back wall, standing close, staring ahead. He jabs with his finger at the bricks, as though stabbing a shorter man in the chest.

  He laughs, stops, turns round to face me.

  ‘You’re not insane, are you?'

  I say nothing.

  ‘Are you insane or not?'

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Probably not.’

  ‘They’ll make you pay for that,’ he says. ‘They’ll make you suffer for that.’

  He moves to the front of the cell, faces into the corner near the bars, goes on talking to himself.

  The officer comes to the cell. ‘The van’s here,’ he says. ‘Get out.’

  The van is white and as long as a bus, with dark windows. There are already four other prisoners inside.

  Two cops cuff me to the bolts fixed to the partition wall.

  There are metal seats along both sides and each seat is housed inside a narrow cubicle, fenced on either side by metal partitions. There’s no wall at the front of the cubicles. The men opposite can see each other, but it’s not possible to see the man sitting next to you.

  When the van leaves the courthouse, I turn round so I can look out the window, look at the streets and houses and shops. I pay a lot of attention. It might be the last time for a long time. Almost all the houses have chimneys. I’ve never paid any attention to the shape of them before but I see that most of the chimneys have two red-brick stacks poking out of them, like small versions of the smokestacks on ships. I see that the most popular colour to paint a door is red.

  I don’t believe in God, never have, but the few times I’ve thought of Him, when I was a kid and went to church for Daniel’s confirmation in the Catholic church, and once to my cousin Megan’s wedding, and I had the idea that He knows who I am and I thought that He probably likes me. And that’s what I get to thinking now. As I look out the van’s window I make Him promises. If He lets me free, I’ll never sin again, and I’ll live a proper life. But God’s got a quick answer ready. He reminds me that things are never as good as I think they’ll be and that I’m always disappointed and that when I’ve got something in my hands I know how to wreck it or not pay the proper attention to what it is I’ve been given.

  He says, The best things in the life of Patrick Oxtoby were the things he remembered or the things he still waited for and I know He’s right, but I go on making pacts with Him, promise that, if He helps me now, the toast that turns up in the morning will be as good as the idea of t
oast in the morning and that I’ll never again complain where complaining isn’t called for.

  We’ve been travelling for about two hours when we arrive in my home town, the city I grew up in, these streets the same ones I walked down two weeks ago to buy a mechanics magazine, and everybody I see looks like somebody I once knew, everything makes me think of something I want and can’t have. The woman handing out pamphlets makes me want to take one and go and do whatever the pamphlet says and, worst of all, Riley’s pool and snooker hall, where I once won a Friday night tournament, makes me want to sob. I might never have any of it again.

  The van stops outside the Bootle Street police station to collect two more prisoners. They climb in the back, both cuffed. They sit in the two empty cubicles opposite and one of them asks the other for a cigarette, but he has no cigarettes and says, ‘You smoked the last outside.’ The one who asked for the cigarette bashes the heel of his shoe against the side of the wooden bench and when he stops bashing his shoe he starts tapping the glass of his watch with a match.

  The van’s stuck in slow traffic and it’s got very hot inside, the first time I’ve been warm since I left the boarding house.

  The other prisoners talk about what they’ve done or haven’t done, the length of the stretch they face, how much time they’ve done before, which are the best prisons, which have the worst food. They say the one we’re going to is Cat A. High-security. ‘A bad place to do your bird. But a good place to do your nut.’

  The windows are blacked and nobody can see me, but the people on the street waiting to cross at the lights, all of them look at the van with faces full of hate.

  I close my eyes.

  17

  Everybody’s stopped talking.

  The gates open and the van drives into the prison grounds, stops at the edge of the yard.

  ‘This is it,’ says the prisoner who asked for the cigarette. ‘The secured gates to hell.’

  I’ve got that same feeling, a seasickness, a nausea deep and low in my gut.

  This is it.

  Four prison guards in grey uniforms open the back of the van, uncuff us, escort us through the yard.

  I look at the two tall turrets at the corners of the high stone walls and remember the last time I looked up at those towers.

  A summer’s day, around the time of the first World Cup I’d got to see on a TV, and I stood with Geoff and Daniel and I asked Daniel if he thought the guards up there had a TV so they could watch the match. He said, yeah, he thought they did.

  We’re inside now, inside the main door, and there’s another set of internal gates. We walk single file down a corridor lit by long fluorescent yellow lights and nobody speaks until we reach a room with a sign on the door that says Admissions. We go in.

  A guard steps out from behind a long, high counter.

  ‘Strip off your clothes and put them in this box.’

  The other prisoners strip.

  I leave my underpants on. ‘Let’s have your jockeys,’ he says.

  I’ve kept the card the brief gave me and have it held tight in my hand.

  I stand naked, like the rest of them. One covers his dick with his hand, one chews the flesh inside his mouth, one scratches his hand, the scab on his new tattoo.

  Another guard comes through the door behind the desk. He wears a different uniform, green, with two epaulettes on each shoulder.

  ‘Nine kits,’ he says.

  They give each of us a plastic yellow bag filled with prison-issue clothes and I copy what the others do, get dressed in the baggy green trousers and a long-sleeved green shirt, brown socks, and a pair of black, canvas, slip-on shoes. I’d expected the prison clothes to be tight, too small, suffocating. Instead, I’m dressed relaxed, as though for a holiday.

  I stick the card my brief gave me in my shoe and then sign a receipt for my belongings.

  We’re given two prison-issue blankets with H.M.P. stitched on in large black letters. Both blankets are grey and heavy. We’re also given a spoon and fork, each the colour of mud, made of a thick plastic, hard and stiff.

  We hand our clothes over to be bagged in more yellow plastic.

  ‘Follow me,’ says the guard in the green uniform.

  He takes me, only me, through two more sets of gates and we enter a long corridor, lit like the others with yellow fluorescent lights.

  I’ve been singled out, taken away from the other prisoners. This could be good news.

  We stop between two doors. The sign on one door says Day Ward, the sign on the other says Fit Cell. Maybe this is the room where mistakes are corrected.

  ‘You’re in here,’ says the guard.

  Here’s where I’ll meet the governor and he’ll tell me I’m to be released. My father’s petitioned for my bail and I’m going free.

  We go into the Day Ward. It’s a small room with a low ceiling and no windows. A tall man in a white coat stands up from behind a desk.

  ‘What’s your name?'

  ‘Patrick.’

  There’s a gurney in the corner, a set of scales, two stethoscopes hanging from a coat-rack, an oxygen machine, a pile of kidney dishes, a blood-pressure gadget.

  ‘Last name.’

  When he speaks, he bends forward, lowers his head.

  ‘Oxtoby.’

  ‘I’m the nurse.’

  The guard stands in the corner and the nurse comes closer to me. ‘I’m going to give you an internal examination and I’m going to check you for the clap and then I’m going to take your blood pressure.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Sign this form.’

  He’s got to know I’m not a murderer.

  ‘What’s a fit cell?’ I say, like a man on a guided tour.

  ‘For epileptics. Please sign the form.’

  I look at the form, but the words swim.

  ‘There’s no need to read,’ he says. ‘It just says what I just said.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Why am I not given an injection for my nausea, a sedative? Where’s the bed in a dark room, the curtains drawn, the doctor?

  I sit and put my head between my knees.

  ‘Stand up,’ says the guard.

  ‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘Can I have a sedative or something?’

  ‘Stand up.’

  ‘There’s been a mistake.’

  ‘Stand.’

  I stand.

  ‘Undress,’ says the nurse.

  He steps forward.

  ‘But I shouldn’t be here,’ I say.

  ‘Undress.’

  I don’t do it.

  ‘Take your clothes off.’

  I’ve got trouble getting my arms free of the sleeves.

  ‘Get a move on,’ says the guard.

  ‘Everything off,’ says the nurse.

  I take it all off.

  The nurse takes a pair of surgical gloves from a box and crouches down in front of me, holds my penis, lifts my testicles, drops my testicles, lifts my penis and pulls the foreskin back as far as it’ll go without ripping it right off.

  ‘Now turn round and bend over,’ he says.

  I bend over and hit my head against the facing wall.

  ‘Move back a bit,’ he says.

  He uses his finger to probe my anus, and when he’s done he throws the used glove into a bin at the other side of the room.

  The glove lands soft on a pile of other gloves.

  ‘Now sit,’ says the nurse.

  I sit and my blood pressure’s taken. The nurse says it’s normal.

  ‘Get on the scales.’

  I’m weighed.

  ‘Fine,’ says the nurse. ‘He can go.’

  I dress slow as I can and get to thinking that, if I’m to have any hope of stopping this from going any further, I’ve got to act now. I’ve got to stop them, and I’ve got to speak up so they don’t slam me into a cell.

  I see there’s a phone on the nurse’s desk.

  ‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Can I make a phone call?’

  ‘You’ll
have to do that later,’ says the guard.

  ‘I just want to make one phone call. I’ve got to tell my family I’m here. They don’t know.’

  The guard looks at his watch. ‘Okay. But it’ll have to be quick.’

  He asks me for the number, makes a record of my mother’s full name, date of birth, and address.

  He dials the number, hands me the phone.

  My mother answers straight away.

  ‘Mum? It’s Patrick.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ she says. ‘What’s happened? Where are you? Are you all right?'

  I can hear people talking in the background, sounds like a good crowd, like a party.

  ‘I’ve done something really stupid,’ I say. ‘I’ve been accused of murder.’

  ‘Oh God, Patrick. That girl called us. And then the police. I’ve been worried sick. Are you all right?'

  She puts her hand over the receiver, shouts to the others, tells them it’s me.

  ‘Where are you?'

  ‘I’m in prison. The magistrate refused my bail.’

  ‘Why have they accused you?'

  ‘I hit that man in the boarding house. But I didn’t mean to kill him.’

  ‘Which one was it? Did he hit you? Was it self-defence?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Why did you hit him then? It doesn’t sound like you, Patrick. Were you drunk? Did you have a fight?’

  ‘Mum, it’s a long story.’

  ‘Oh my dear God, Patrick. What did you do? Did you kill him?'

  ‘No,’ I say, quietly, softly. ‘I just hit him once.’

  Somebody prompts her to ask me something. It sounds like my aunt Mary.

  ‘But that man in the boarding house,’ she says, ‘he’s dead. Is that true? Is it that one who went to Cambridge? The girl who phoned me didn’t know who it was and the police wouldn’t tell me. They only said the same thing, that you’re on suspicion for murder.’

  ‘I’m not a murderer, Mum. There’s been a mistake.’

  She’s started crying and I let her cry.

  The guard steps in close so I can see him. He taps his watch, then holds up two fingers.

  ‘What happened?’ she asks. ‘Did you get in a fight? Were you drunk? Are you all right?'

  ‘It wasn’t a fight. I just hit him once.’

  ‘This can’t be right.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘How did he die?'