by David Mathew
I’m with you, I reply. You want a guinea pig.
Well, not exactly.
You want a snitch, Miss Thistle, is what you want.
Alfreth, warns Patterson in her deepest voice.
I don’t snitch, I tell her categorically; but I’m thinking different things entirely. I’m thinking three different things entirely. I’m thinking: One. If you’re interested in the so-called learning pathway, then why are you sitting with someone who’s passed all his exams and not in a motherfucking classroom? Two. A letter to the Governor. Not an Education Gov, but the Gov: the Governor of the jail, Glazer, who I’m assuming has okayed this malarkey. The letter about my confusion, and which I’m already penning in my head. The one that reads and goes along the lines of:
Dear Bumberclutt,
What the fuck do you think you’re doing letting this woman into a maximum security prison, arsehole? Are you trying to mash her or something?
Love,
Billy Alfreth.
And three. The sense—the feeling that I can’t much describe and even less explain—that something is wrong here. Something is missing. I am certain, right now, that Miss Thistle is lying to me.
Billy, no, she continues, I don’t require a snitch. I require a mind.
Excuse me?
Someone with intelligence, who knows the workings of the Education Department inside out.
I stop tearing my way into the magazine bundle.
Still sounds like a snitch to me, Miss Thistle, I answer politely.
Call me Kate, she answers—no doubt to Angie’s disapproval—but in such a way that I know I’ve just been played.
As Ostrich might say, Man fall in love for lesser ting.
Four.
Tango One to Papa Alpha. Request permission to send Redband Alfreth from Education Block One to A Wing, over.
The screw talking is nearing retirement but he’s okay. Worn at the belt, his radio tweets and I hear: Permission granted, over. So I’m on my way, on the first leg of today’s deliveries, carrying my luminous yellow satchel of TV guides and other periodicals. The rain is coming down and I’m only in my sweats. By the time I get to the A Wing gate I’m frozen and sopping wet. I’m let in. Then it’s onwards. Albert Three to Papa Alpha. Request permission to send Redband Alfreth from Albert to Bernard, over. So it goes. Permission granted, over.
At least I don’t have to shovel shit all day with the Gardening Crew. But the rain is like nothing I’ve ever known, up here. You get used to the cameras following your every move; you get used to the constant threat of violence (accepted and doled out); yet I still haven’t got used to the weather. Swear down it rains harder up here, up in the hills. I can’t wait for Sosh. I don’t expect to find any answers to anything, but if I can at least find the way to pose the right questions I’ll be happy.
Lunch is manure in a bun.
Five.
Segregation Unit, I’m told. Tooty suite.
I don’t correct him. You don’t correct Screw Jones, unless you happen to have two weeks left to live and you’re aiming for a story that will live on longer than your own mortal bollocks do.
What’s the charge against me, sir?
Fuck off. You saw it. Join the line.
Thank you, sir.
It’s nearly ten o’clock, and I’ve long since feared my way past the point of rational self-delusion. I’m not called for the Library, so I’m going to be called for something else—and I know what the something else is. Adjudication.
Down block, bruv.
But what can I say? It’s a fight in the Cookery Room. Roller and Meaney go batshit and start the process. In come in the screws. Mashed if I’m going to mention the kissing.
They’re waiting for me. I go straight in. Jones is behind me and I walk the long, long corridor that leads to the Adjudication Court, where Governor Glazer will be waiting with his hangdog smile and his halitosis. The room is, as ever, the colour of tar-flecked phlegm. I take my seat at the bolted-down table and place my hands on the surface, knowing the drill. Look up to see Glazer looking down from his throne.
Do you know why you’re here, Alfreth? he asks.
Yes, sir.
Good. And what have you got to say?
It’s a twist-up, innit. Two yoots, two screws.
That’s not what I’m getting at and you know it.
I shrug my shoulders. Can’t explain it is it, I answer truthfully.
Were you aware of any conflict beforehand?
No, sir.
Were you aware of anything, Alfreth?
No, sir. Shit went long of a sudden. Hot minute, yat.
And you understand the results of your being found out to be lying? Grazer adds, like the bloodclot he is.
I understand, sir, I reply.
Loss of Enhanced. Loss of Redband. Loss of privileges.
Sir? I say, I don’t know dick. Much a revelation to me as to you.
I sincerely doubt that, Glazer answers. Dismissed.
I haven’t even been asked to confirm my name and prison number. There’s no doubt about it: this has shitted them up ghost-style.
I said dismissed.
Thank you, sir, I mutter.
But there’s no way I can fail to notice the woman sitting in the witness stand, as all new employees are entitled—or forced—to do, to scratch their heads about the Adjudication proceedings.
It’s Kate Thistle.
Six.
Kate Thistle is thirty-nine years old. I know because I asked her. She could have lied but she didn’t. Or so I’m assuming. Are you listening, though? I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing.
Like, she asks me, Do you regret your crime? and I’m like rah. Allow it.
And she’s like, Tell me. If you want to. And I’m like, Nappin, Miss.
You won’t think she’s thirty-nine by the looks of her, mind. She looks twenty-six, and I would. In my head, I already have.
It’s immaterial. I say to Ostrich, Man alive. I can’t wait till the weekend.
It is the weekend, he replies.
No, man. I mean tomorrow night. Saturday.
Why, what’s so explosive about Saturday night, man?
Playing Shelley at pool, innit. Three burn stake.
Ostrich whistles. Who knows about this?
You, me and him, I answer. I can trust you with this, can’t I, Ostrich?
Sure, man. Man lips as sealed as a lady panda poom-poom. But be careful, innit. They catch you gambling again, man lose his Enhanced.
I know. But he challenged me. I can’t let it get around that man challenged me and I didn’t do nothing about it. Be worse than when he stole that CD and I didn’t fight him to get it back.
That different. Everyone know you couldn’t fight him on that occasion. You just had your job. You fight, you lose it. Ostrich shrugs. You might lose. Just contemplate the ifs, innit.
I won’t lose to that fucking squirrel.
Just contemplate, man.
For a second I do so. And I arrive at the conclusion, which I voice, that losing is no biggie: it’s failing to respond to a duel, in this place, that’s the biggie. When that starts getting around, God knows what’ll occur.
Screw Jones gets his radioed orders. In the exercise yard, in the gloom, under the impotent floodlights, he responds with a barked out command:
Okay, fellas. Everyone in. Time for night-night.
We get to our feet. We are all dressed in grey. We are already in our pyjamas, but we’ll have to get out of them to turn in. Some of us will stay up all night. Some will pray; some will play—the X-Box, the PlayStation; some will read and improve their minds; some will bash their bongos until nothing comes out but water. But we’re all the same. That’s what this place does. That’s its job. To neutralize us.
> I’ve timed it to perfection, I think. I’ve timed it so that Ostrich and I have less than two minutes between the yard and our adjacent cells on the ones. I’ve waited two days to say what I’m about to say, but the time has been important; I’ve needed the time in order to firm up the deal with Shelley: the same one that I’ve just lied to Ostrich about. Two minutes. Less than that now, as we enter the disinfected atmosphere and start our climb up the first set of metal stairs.
Ostrich-man? I say. Are you listening, though? I’m risking a lot so I keep my voice down.
I’m listening.
What I win tomorrow, man, yeah?
Yeah? he says cautiously. He knows he might be in as much trouble—for conspiratorial silence, for duplicity—as I am if it becomes known that he is aware of my gambling pact with Shelley.
It’s yours, Ostrich, I whisper. Three burn.
At the top of the flight of stairs we turn left and he looks into my eyes, his bloodshot orbits neatly framing two pupils shaped like question marks.
If you tell me about the others you killed, I tell him. Three burn.
I enter my cell, drop down to my knees for prayers. The door closes and the night begins.
My life begins.
Seven.
I mean that. Night time brings on the truth and the spray that dissolves all of the glue that I need to use in order to hold my day together. My dreams are like balm, like salvation. My dreams are vivid. My dreams give me clues about how best to go on and how I’ve royally messed up. But there’s a life I enter— briefly—before I even touch my dreams. That place between prayer and coma. You’re not quite awake but you’re not quite asleep either. Jerked this way and that, you’re a puppet at the whim and the beck and call of the stronger forces in your head. I like that feeling. That drifting, dozing feeling. I feel at home there. In one dream I take it all back. In one dream I swim back to Bricky—or Brixton if we’re still on formal-names terms—and I do it all in reverse. Take my pen-knife from his arm, watch him un-punch my beak, and slur my way backwards through my demand for cash. The film stops. Then it starts the right way again, but this time my co-Ds and I are not mugging; we’re giving him directions to the museum or something. We’re helping. I like that dream. Most of my dreams I like, in fact, even the bad ones. Even the ones where I’m climbing a hill and I keep falling down, sliding down to the foot; or being chased by an animal; or trying to lift something that squishes me. Because they’re not real, the dreams, and reality is the worst horror when you can’t control it or understand it. Dreams are oases. I lie about my dreams when I have my monthly psychiatric report. It’s nice, if not vital, to have something to myself. Something not in the notes that will wriggle their way into my Parole Report. Not that I’m going to get parole; I’m not stupid. I did it. I pleaded guilty. And I did it for money.
She asks me how I’m feeling and I say sick. What’s wrong with you? she’ll ask. And I’ll say nothing, man, I’m sick. Sick good. Yeah, blood, I’ll answer—as though she hasn’t heard it before. And then I’ll realise I’m just a case study number and she’s forgotten me since last time; and what’s worse is that I haven’t even charged up enough respect for her to consult the notes that she made at the previous meeting.
Your dreams, she’ll sometimes ask. Tell me about them.
And that’s where I lie. I tell a fib. Because it doesn’t matter much if I do or if I don’t and if there’s one more thing that unites all of us here, it’s the element of needing something to call our own.
I name an actress or a pop star. I tell her she’s sucking my dick. She records the information with a penciled smile, because it’s what’s expected. I tell her I come on her breasts. She writes it down. I wonder, parenthetically, what she feels when she interviews the nonces and ponces on Puppydog Wing, where the questions are presumably an equivalent. What does a four- eyes dream of? I know there’s a yoot on Puppy who raped a puppy. What colour are that cunt’s dreams? A colour I don’t understand and whose flavour I don’t like. Oh. Oh, and he happened to rape his sister and his mum as well. Nice guy. I’ll send a Christmas card.
When I deliver the magazines to Puppydog, I always wish for a few more extra minutes than I get when I go to all of the other Wings. A few more minutes with which to light up some kind of firebrand and burn the dirty fuckers in their customised homes. The perverts.
Anyway. Where was I? Where was I, in the night?
Her name is also Kate, by the way. Kate Wollington. But her accent is foreign and she married into the surname, is my guess, like someone marrying into a family business. My psychologist, I mean. Married or not, we still call her Miss. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of anyone called Mrs.
Won’t happen to me. The marrying bit, I mean. I’m tired, yat.
Sometimes the Night Screw opens the flap and I pretend to be asleep. It’s a way of warding the cunts off, no pun intended. Umleitung. It’s a German word, meaning diversion, that I learned doing my German GCSE, here on the in. I got a B. Accent poor but delivery clear. Swear down. Can’t wait to see how my German GCSE will help me on the out. When I hit road, as Ostrich might say. A boon, no doubt. My tongue is in my cheek like a pestle and mortar. What am I warding them off from? From my freedom.
Only free when you’re asleep, in this place.
I miss my mum. I miss her resembling a Rottweiller chewing a chilli, but most of all I miss her laughing and gassing and giving it a good time innit. I miss her arms, I miss her smile. I don’t miss my dad. I never knew him. Not many of us miss our dads.
I’m going to sleep.
Eight.
I’m going to dream.
This bastard’s my favourite. I’m a pulse of electricity, I think, without weight and without physical form. I’m dusting large: here, there, yay under the stair. No wanker can stop me yat. And I approach the wire mesh surrounding the Wing; I sail through it. I approach the thirty-foot walls; I sail through ‘em. Not over them, is it, but through ‘em. It’s beautiful. It’s my vindication.
For what precisely, I don’t know. Because I did it.
Sometimes I dream I didn’t, but I did. He wouldn’t give me his wallet. I stabbed him quickly, three times in the right arm. Five years. High on drink and bare sniff at the time. But as ever, when I think about that night, I get the memory mangled with another, in which I am being attacked. I am fighting for my own life. It’s what I’ve said all along. I can’t shake free of the idea.
It’s Saturday morning, and I pray in my crackers, bare- chested.
Always feels like a new beginning, does a Saturday. I’m there in nothing but tattoos, boxers and beads. It’s the closest thing to peace I get, some weeks, outside night-time.
Short-lived.
Door opens. Screws Jarvis and Jones. I’m thinking: twist- up.
On your feet, Alfreth, says Jarvis. Middle-aged; red nose of the hardened drinker I want to be and would have been.
What’s the charge, sir? I ask. It’s the middle of the night.
No charge, says Jarvis. Just come out of your pad.
I’m still thinking twist-up. But any road, I move. Time what? Two-thirty? What choice do I fucking have?
Jarvis says, Piss test.
I can’t help myself. I say, I’m sorry.
And Jones says, You will be fucking sorry, cunt, if you refuse.
I’m not refusing, sir, I say. I’m just confused. It’s the night.
Squat.
I’m horrified. Here? I ask. On the landing?
Just do as you’re told, says Jarvis.
I will, sir, I reply, not knowing where any of this has come from—and confused that the parcel has been delivered to my own door. Done nothing wrong, I keep reminding myself— nothing at all. It’s the early hours and everyone is asleep. Or if not asleep, then at least banged up. It’ll do.
I’ll do it, sir, I say;
and I drop to my haunches. No problem.
Jones says, You’d better be fucking certain there’s no problem, cunt.
There’s none, sir. You wanted a piss test.
Say I did.
I’m starting to believe that I’ve offended Jones without knowing it, such is his unregulatedly violent approach to me and my life. Done dick.
Where’s the piss pot? I ask.
Squat.
For the first time I notice that Screw Jones has on the gloves. Open up and say ahh, the cunt gives me. And in he goes. Two fingers. No remorse. It’s happened before, but never in the middle of the night.
A mobile phone? A key of C? What the hell are they looking for? They rummage, right there, until they’re satisfied that I haven’t secreted the Crown Jewels inside my rectum.
And then I say: You done? Are you done? Now it’s my turn, sir. I demand the right to piss in your bottle. Please produce it. And I do mean toot-suite. I want my clear piss on your record. Sir.
You cunt, says Jones.
I’m not doing anything wrong, I inform him. Where’s your bottle, please? My voice is even and don’t-give-a-monkey’s. Please, sir, I add.
Or what, you little shit? Jones asks.
Or tomorrow morning, I tell him, I’ll be requesting the G-11 form. And I’ll fill the fucker in, sir. The one about abuse. The one that will put on the record, quite clearly, that you and Officer Jarvis raped me this evening. Good night, sir. And whatever you’re looking for, I hope you find it elsewhere. Not in me.
You cheese-eater, says Jones, quite obviously rattled. But I close my own door on his words.
I’ve even taken that power away from him.
Nine.
What you do is, you learn indifference. You learn a new way of dealing with stimulus, and that new way is thought of as indifference. Like talking rah. Like talking yat. Hear the bruvs, for example, talking rap. Sure: they’re animated—as animated as when they’re giving the bullshit about ‘rolling with the nines’—nine millimetre pistols—or ‘mashing poom-poom’—banging skirt—but it’s just a dive, it’s a way, it’s a method. Avoiding time. Means jack. Means zero. I don’t go down that avenue. Got my eyes wide open. Call it a failing if you will, but that’s me. Like me or loathe me.