Out in the yard the sun shoots me a glare of such vehemence that I squint my eyes in half-blindness, my vision returning just in time to see next-door’s cat mid-dump and intent on burying her shit by the side of the drainage hole. Ever since the woman on the corner kicked her out of that square foot of rose garden for making too many holes she’s had this vain hope that one day she’ll be able to dig her way through concrete.
I don’t walk like some pregnant women, like they’re dragging a cement mixer around with them; I give my step a bit of a bounce but it’s an odd kind of gait, what with my shoulders pushed back and my spine a little arched, which I read somewhere is the worst thing you can do, and will probably lead to backache. If it starts hurting me I’ll stop doing it, but by this point it’s grown into kind of a habit. Now that my stomach has swelled I feel much more comfortable, that everything is how it should be, very public and on display. I can see the people sat drinking outside the pub on the other side of the road, partaking in a nice pint or two on a hot summer afternoon. One of them looks over, probably notices some lass got herself knocked-up. I don’t mind; I feel validated by my size. For months all I’ve had to put up with is ‘But, you’re so thin’ remarks probably meant as compliments but which succeeded in making me feel like a fraud. At least now I know I haven’t imagined the whole thing.
The only person who seemed to notice in the beginning was the woman at the bakery where I used to go every weekday morning on my way to work to buy a cake. ‘D’you know yet if it’s a girl or a boy?’ the middle-aged woman had asked me one day when I was about four or five months pregnant. I’d looked down at my stomach and the woman had nodded, patted her own belly and smiled. It was winter then, and I’d always been dressed in a thick coat and sweater every time I went in there, and I was so thin even the midwife was starting to wonder when I was going to expand. How could the woman have known? ‘Of course I can tell, it’s one of those things women just know,’ the baker had responded cryptically, adding a beatific smile.
The old Pakistani women from one of the other houses that share our yard are creeping slowly along the concrete, a pair of wrapped objects, their bodies two amorphic shrouds of loose cotton, barely moving, like enormous snails in front of me. They take up most of the space, and I have to remind myself that I can no longer slither through the gap in the way that I used to. I always miscalculate the area needed for the addition of the bump. I gad slowly to the rear, watching my sandalled feet rise and then fall.
I’m bringing in the tea I’ve finally finished making through from the kitchen, which is like five steps, along with some biscuits I found on top of the fridge I’d forgotten about, surmising that it’s a nice change from looking for things I’ve already eaten, when I have one of those hormonal waves of sentiment. I lean against the wall with my legs out straight and long and stare straight ahead of me for a couple of moments. I like our house, I say to Lee all of a sudden, I wish we didn’t have to move.
But we do have to move, in three months. It’s hard to know if we should start looking before or after the baby is born. Before might be too soon, but after might be too difficult. After, how can I even picture afterwards, if I don’t know where it will be set?
The thing about this house, even if it hasn’t got a spare room, is that we have this huge living room that we’re in now. Only suddenly I can’t help noticing that it doesn’t seem so vast and spacious anymore, what with that cot swallowing up so much of my glorious space.
I got so panicked about having the baby early I decided we had to go out and buy a cot, which of course came flat-packed but Lee being like every male I’ve ever met had to put it up the very same afternoon when we got it and now it sits there, collecting dust bunnies underneath it so that we can hang our clothes over the bars instead of our usual habit of discarding them on the floor. We should probably get out of the habit of doing that before the baby starts sleeping in it. I never expected it to be so bulky, to take up quite so much of the room. I guess when I pictured it in my mind I was imagining one of those cribs, those dainty artefacts like painted eggs always swaying so sweetly in the shop windows but which are basically pointless purchases given that the baby will have grown out of it within four or five months. But this is a full-size cot, all right.
I remember when we bought it, how they were in the shop. This woman, miserable as sin she was. I always thought you had to be permanently full of the joys of spring to work in somewhere like Mothercare, all smiles and congratulations and bliss at being the ones to provide for our little miracles. But we had some YTSer who just wanted to file her nails and wont right sure. At the time I only asked if they had one in stock, and she said she’d have to check, but when we heard a great clunking and scraping of cardboard packaging being lugged back up the stairs Lee turned to me and said, Oh God, we’d better have it now, we can’t ask her to take it back down there again.
Lee’s not from these parts, a London boy he is and can’t understand how people round here can be so miserable. I keep telling him, we’re not really so depressed as you make out, it just seems that way, I allow him that, and maybe we’re not into forcing a happy demeanour in everyone’s faces whether they like it or not. You know how they are down in London, my uncle used to say, all smarmy and smiles, like they want something out of you. All false. All two-faced. Lee thinks we’re nuts.
I know the cot’s only the beginning. The baby stuff is coming, encroaching steadily across the room until there’s just us, and the sofa-bed, the television and the Playstation in this corner.
I look over at Lee. He doesn’t notice I’m staring at him; I think he must still be in the computer game, in his head, off killing ogres and witches, considering his tactics for getting through the rest of this level, trying to predict what he’s about to come up against.
I’ll admit I’m not quite with it myself. Funny how a thought as innocent as having to stop leaving my cardigan in the cot once the baby is born could lead to such a panic in my mind. I can’t get past the maternity ward. If we can’t get this warrior through this cavern region, how can I get myself past the childbirth?
Maybe it’s just that I’ve got too much time on my hands. I figured at one point I needed to take some time to meditate on my condition; hippy bollocks probably, but anyway. I didn’t even bother trying to explain how I felt to Lee, ’cause he’s already of the opinion that I think more than is healthy. I finished work too early, really, but it’s hard to clean offices without being able to bend down and get back up again quickly and easily. They took me off the most strenuous tasks, but that didn’t leave all that much for me to do. My boss told me to stay on for longer, no use sitting at home and brooding, she said, keep yourself busy, I worked right up until the week before I had my first one, no problem at all. I guess our generation lack the work ethic of our elders; I could hardly wait for an excuse to leave.
As for Lee, he has still got a job, not that you’d know it of late. He hasn’t taken any shifts in the nightclub that hired him for almost a month now. He has this paranoia the baby will come in the middle of a shift, and nobody will hear the phone over the din when I try to call. Like I said, he’s convinced this one’s impatient to get out.
Sometimes I feel like I should be doing something else and I wish he was at work and then I try to make a list of the things I still need to buy, but I always get bored with that in about five minutes and find myself eager to get back to the game, where everything is understandable and straightforward, the ending is clear and tasks are prescribed. Maybe if Lee was at work I would be finding myself cleaning out the kitchen cupboards instead.
How many levels are there to this, anyway? I ask Lee but he doesn’t answer, he’s in the middle of some bloody combat and I don’t think I should have disturbed him with a question. I wonder if we’ll finish it before the baby is born. And if that happens, I can’t think how we’re going to pass the time while we’re waiting.
Crime Class
Mark Costello
/> Morning…
If you have a certificate that claims you are a teacher, does that mean you can educate, instruct and teach? And even if you can, surely by virtue of you wanting to be a teacher suggests you are brainless and therefore not a responsible person to instil ideas in others, especially when your own ideas are preoccupied with the imaginings of vicarious mischief; violence and death, or the romance of alcoholic French sailors pissing on cobblestones. For my sins I am now cast as a teacher. My first day as a teacher was a tragedy, I am now at the point of farce readying myself for a new class in the world of further education. On mornings like this I think ‘He who can, does. He who cannot, is a cunt, also known as a teacher.’
Are my eyes really brown? What would the reader like to know about me? I was born when man first landed on the moon. I am thirty-five, live alone and am too embarrassed to use the smaller ‘bachelor’ trolleys in supermarkets. I feel a mixture of pity and contempt for those who buy the little half-tins of beans. I pity their solitude and am contemptuous of their inability to eat a full tin like a proper person. I have worked in a Further Education College for five years. Work is a pain and fills me with distaste. Other teachers annoy me. They seem interested in what they are doing and appear to believe it is worthy. If emptying dustbins were better paid, that would be my preferred occupation. It is an important social function and this disposable society would be totally fucked and more full of shit if it didn’t exist. Can the same be said for further education?
I am worried about my weight at the moment. I always used to look at my dad’s fat gut and think, that’s not going to be me. But it is. People remark on how much I look like my dad even down to the increased waistband. Where did all this weight come from? I used to be slim, energetic, attractive to the opposite sex, and now, well, I’m not like that anymore. I’ve had to admit defeat and move from medium straight to extra large. I could use my position I suppose to entice some woman. The intellectual attraction, positive strokes of the modern, sensitive, thinking man. Ah but I can’t be bothered. The energy levels have plummeted. I’ve become a ritualist, dragging myself through life and work; my only solace, the bottle and music, oh and an unhealthy interest in documentaries about Nazis.
I always get a bit worried on the morning of a new class. Anxieties trouble me. Have I prepared enough? How will it go? Most of the teachers who have taught me in Further Education, Adult Education, University, training or whatever have been generally poor really. Well, not poor more uninspiring. I want to be inspiring, can I stress that, I’d love to be inspiring, for people to leave thinking that was good. But that’s the real problem, I think I’m actually very boring. I try and think who I can gain inspiration from myself to become more than I am. On the beginning of Don’t Let Me Down by the Beatles, John Lennon urges the others to play loud and ‘give me the courage to come screaming in…’ That’s what we all need, the courage to come screaming in.
So OK I’ve got a class this morning, the first of ten weekly two-hour sessions, An Introduction to Criminology, the crime class.
Starting…
My dad who has done his fair share of courses at college, used to always get stopped by new students who thought he was one of the teachers. With me, the opposite is true. The crime class is taking place in a community centre away from college. This pleases me. It’s timetabled for Friday mornings 9.30–12.30, this also pleases me. It means there’s the potential to slope off after and go to the pub instead of going back to work. This thought pleases me the most.
I go into the building, set up the room and get my stuff out. Soon after, the first student comes in.
‘Are you here for the crime class?’ she asks.
‘Yes.’ I answer.
‘I hope it’s good,’ she said. ‘last time I came on a course run by this college it was useless.’
I smile. Great, I think. A picky learner, actually wants something interesting. ‘Well I’ll do my best. My name’s Charlie by the way, I’m the teacher.’
‘Oh sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m Tracy, I thought you were a student.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment Tracy. Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?’
I took the order and vanished to the kitchen to put the kettle on. When I returned with Tracy’s drink there were another half-dozen or so folk in the room. I said hello, told them we’d do the introductions in a minute or two. We waited a few moments more and another one rolled in. I checked their names on my list, full house. When I’d made sure that everyone had a drink, I vanished again, this time to the toilet, where I punched the air and snorted like Robert De Niro as Jake La Motta in Raging Bull. ‘C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon’, I repeated, my mantra for the morning, ‘you can do it, you can do it, you can do it, you can do it.’ Someone came out of one of the toilets. It was the centre caretaker.
‘Alright?’ I enquired.
‘Are you having trouble shitting mate?’ he asked, ‘I’ve got some suppositories in me cloister.’
Back in the class, the students are seated in anticipatory fashion, eyes pointing in my direction.
‘OK folks, just before we get going, we’ll get the enrolment forms out of the way.’ That one always kills a bit of time. Nullifies any potentially positive vibes and takes away the edge of excitement, the negation.
That over, I ask for them to introduce themselves and why they are here today. In no particular order their names are Andrew, Dave, Barbara, Karen, Anne, Donna, Paul and Tracy. They work in or represent, again in no particular order, the prison service, a young person’s unit, a psychiatric institution, court official, ex P.A. drug and alcohol service. In other words, a right bunch. Most agreed that the main reason they were here was to understand what motivates people to be criminals especially those who kill, torture and mutilate. I have a suspicion that the prison officers are on a bit of a skive, but I don’t mind that, so am I. I say something about myself, not quite on the lines of I’m a fat, boring turd although that’s what I’m thinking. I take a moment. I mustn’t let it slip. I take hold of a quick vision of Richard Harris in Cromwell, before asking:
‘What is crime?’
Donna is the first to answer.
‘It’s doing wrong’ she says. Donna’s about my age. Actually she’s a couple of years older. I note on her enrolment form her age and that she’s married. A shame, she’s not bad looking. Nicely put together. I compose my thoughts.
‘Yes it could be doing wrong,’ I say. ‘But do we all agree what is right and wrong. Do you think for instance that drinking is wrong?’
‘It couldn’t be more right,’ laughs Dave. I like his tone. He’s in his forties, a wiry thing, with a short crop and goatee. He’s one of the prison officers, one of the lads. I hope he has no self-control when it comes to drinking, I hope he doesn’t know when to stop.
‘Drinking is socially acceptable in this country, but in others it isn’t. In fact you can be severely punished for drinking alcohol in some countries,’ I say. ‘So is crime…’ I pause for effect…‘a matter of right and wrong?’
‘But surely there are some things that are just wrong aren’t there? Like killing,’ says Anne, the sixty-odd year-old ex-Personal Assistant. Paul takes up the challenge. Another thin one, how do these people stay so thin, don’t they eat? I know, I know, it’s their metabolism. God I should know I’ll be teaching about the theory of Somatotypes later.
‘What about war? Doesn’t that involve killing?’ he says.
‘Yes, but that’s different surely?’ answers Anne.
‘Different?’ I ask. ‘What makes one act of killing right and another wrong?’ There’s a moment’s silence, before Tracy announces that it’s to do with the law.
‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘What is crime? It is any action that breaks the legally defined rules of a society. It’s as simple as that.’ But is it as simple as that? I suggest that it is further complicated by our own individual beliefs and morals. ‘There may be many things that are against the law
that we can be punished for, but should we? Conversely there are ways of behaving that many people may find offensive, but are not legally punishable.’
‘How do you mean?’ says Andrew, a rotund, grinning baldie.
‘What I am talking about here is deviance, meaning to move from the norm.’ They look puzzled. ‘We all accept that there are certain ways of behaving, right? Waiting our turn, not jumping queues, being reasonable. But then we see others doing things out of the ordinary, things that are not the norm. It could be as simple as someone talking very loudly in public places, men wearing women’s clothes, especially in public. Anything that the majority of people would consider unusual or unacceptable behaviour.’
‘So presumably sexuality can come into this,’ says Tracy.
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘And a moral dimension comes into this as well. A lot of religious institutions view homosexuality as amoral, and some individuals see it as abnormal.’
‘And it used to be illegal,’ says Tracy.
‘That’s right,’ I agreed, ‘and in the past, even enlightened scientists saw it as a disease that could be cured, or a mental aberration. So. There is crime and there is deviance. There are law-breakers and norm-breakers. Not all criminals are necessarily deviants, and not all deviants are criminals. Why? Because no matter what people think, I can’t be locked up for wearing my mother’s old dresses, sitting in a rocking chair and watching Psycho all day. Similarly someone can be locked up for protesting against an unpopular measure. Would we see this person as a deviant? Perhaps not.’
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