O My Days

by David Mathew

  Three.

  The disappointment lasts for most of the morning. Then it’s time for me to take the Library Pass to Classroom 1, to begin the slow process of letting one prisoner into the Library at a time. It’s one of the I.T. classes; the Gov is John, and he turns to me as I knock on the door and look through the wire- meshed glass. He straightens up from one yoot’s screen and walks over, unleashing his keys from the pouch and he lets me in. I have taken a risk—a huge risk. Beneath the laminated A4-sized pass is a tiny scrap of paper I’m holding to the plastic, like a magician secreting a playing card. But the paper is much smaller than that, folded down to the size of a pill. I am gambling that Roller, who is nearest to the door, will take the usual scrummage to be first out of the room seriously. It’s my only shot. Once I’ve given up control of the pass it will shuttle back and forth until nobody in Classroom 1 wants it any more. Then I will take it to Classroom 2.

  Me, Gov! Roller shouts, standing up and pushing his chair back a metre on its wheels. Our eyes meet. It’s not friendly. It’s an urgent understanding. It’s a battleground stasis.

  Wogwun, Alfreth, Roller mutters, discerning what John has not seen: that I’m holding the pass very tightly and in an awkward way.

  It’s wet, blood, I tell Roller.

  John does not know that this means nothing at all. I hope Roller will understand that I’m trying to talk in a code that only the two of us can bust. Watched by the Education Landing Officers, we walk in silence back to the Library, with Roller now in possession of the pass and of my note.

  I enter the Library but Roller says to the screw, Before I go in, sir, would you mind just unlocking the toilet. I’ve been drinking a lot of water.

  The screw stands up. Don’t get any drops on that Library Pass, I hear him say as the door closes slowly on its fire-hinge.

  Before we hear the toilet flush, carrying away its flotsam of one discarded piece of paper, I fancy that I hear other things. I hear Roller unfolding the note; I even hear Roller reading my words—What REALLY happened?—and I imagine him sitting there, and I can hear the swish of his hair as he shakes his head.

  You’re all sweaty, Alfreth, Miss Patterson informs me.

  Sorry, Miss. Think I’ve caught a cold from Jarvis. My next door.

  All sympathy, of course, she ignores what I say and instructs me to boot up the machines at the end of the room that teach driving test theory. We’re expecting a couple of bookings in half an hour and the PCs have been experiencing some technical problems.

  I couldn’t give a fuck about driving test theory. I’m just waiting for the pass to arrive back at the Library so I can take it to Room 2, passing 1 on the way. Though I’m not sure if Roller is smart enough to give me my answer. My pessimism is unfounded. After the I.T. class has finished ordering mags, renewing books and browsing atlases, I stroll slowly along the corridor—even more slowly as I approach the window to Room 1. Roller sees me coming and very quickly he uses his mouse to click onto another file that he has obviously prepared behind Gov John’s back. He highlights the miniscule font on the screen and clicks it up to size 48—massive—so I can read it from outside. He has twisted the monitor slightly towards me, and it’s a good job I’m a swift reader, man, because he’s typed more than I expected.

  It was like time stopped man—I went DEAD—and there was someone else in my head, I could feel him there but I could not get him out—he tells me he can make my time go faster, he’s got a way, and he shows me he can control people’s minds, some people, and he makes me fuck Meaney up bad, and I don’t want to, yoot done nothing, you know what’s up Alfreth, man I’m scared, then he makes them screws kiss us, he’s evil.

  Move on, Alfreth! the screw calls from his desk.

  Yes, sir.

  My teeth are chattering; my skin is raw. But I am happy.

  Four.

  Visits! We all look forward to Visits! Unless your visitor has specifically indicated that today’s the day, you don’t have any idea of who you’re going to meet in the Visits Room, near B. I’m praying with my beads when Screw Oates tells me. Pull on the denim. Make a good impression yat. Could be Mumsy. But it’s unlikely. She always phones first to arrange a visit. (Leave a message for me to use my credit to call back.) So it’s one of my boys! Yay! No. It’s my babymamma Julie, and our daughter Patrice. It’s like a Christmas visit; it’s like a birthday. Oh fuck, I realize. . .

  Happy Birthday, darling, I say to Patrice.

  I haven’t shaved; I haven’t even deodorised properly. It’s my little girl’s special day and it’s slipped my mind. What sort of father am I?

  You could have brought a card, Billy, says Julie.

  And you might have noticed that I don’t have a free range, I answer sarcastically, of the ordinary person’s shopping facilities.

  Fine. You made one on the computer last year.

  Not allowed anymore, I lie, innit.

  Well, why not?

  Some yoot send out coded escape messages.

  This part is true. The problem was discovered when someone came to comprehend that at the age of nineteen it’s unlikely that one boy can have seventeen daughters.

  Patrice is taking turns between gurgling and sulking. The Visits Room is packed—because it’s the weekend. More people have time to exercise their guilty consciences at the weekend. Julie has returned from the tuck shop with the most chocolate that I’m allowed to receive: five bars. I have never once mentioned that I hate the stuff.

  I need a favour, I tell her. I need some books sent in.

  Julie frowns. You work in a Library, Billy; just order them, she says.

  They won’t let me have ‘em.

  Then they’ll never get past Reception.

  Just listen. Are you listening?

  Julie huffs. I’m not a fucking gangster, Billy. Don’t do that line with me.

  Ignoring her, I add: The people in Reception are dicks. Don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. Call it a distance learning gig. Call it anything you want. I’m asking you for a favour, not a kidney. It’s just a couple of books.

  I turn to the nearest screw. Don’t know his name.

  Gov! Permission to kiss my girlfriend, sir.

  Granted.

  Hadn’t you better ask permission from me, too? Julie asks as I lean across the table.

  Our lips meet and open wide; I use my tongue to push into Julie’s mouth the wish-list I have written, inside the saliva-proof prophylactic of a folded-over piece of paracetamol casing. As usual, Julie hides it on the left side of her mouth, near the back, where a molar is compacted and there’s a bit of space.

  You could say something like: that was nice, Julie. I miss you, Julie. I’m kissing you because I want to, Julie, as well as I have to. Anything would do. I’m easily pleased, Billy.

  Sorry. I’m distracted.

  So I see. And by the way, how exactly am I supposed to pay for these books? They’s expensive, you know, Julie wises me.

  I know, I know. Am I chatting shit with you, woman? Getting vex now.

  Speak English, Billy, Julie says wearily. She picks up Patrice and gently settles our little girl onto her lap; the girl squirms. That movement makes me winsome.

  I calm down. Take the money out of my account, I tell Julie slowly—releasing a clot of invisible steam through my teeth.

  Can’t innit, I’m told. She averts her eyes.

  Why not? Why not, Julie?

  All gone, Julie answers.

  Excuse me? I can eventually say.

  Once upon a time, boys and girls, I was doused in petrol. The assailant ignited matches, one after the other, until I agreed that he had permission to take my wallet. Just take it! I screamed as the next match got closer. You feel chilled to the bone. It’s how I feel at this precise moment.

  Julie. I left eighty-five-fucking-grand in my curre
nt account, I say. What are you chatting me, it’s all gone? Before I get angry. Angrier.

  I’ve been meaning to tell you, Billy.

  Tell me now.

  It was Bailey. She sounds relieved to be made to tell the tale. To make it past tense. She won’t look at me—she looks at the top of Patrice’s head—but there is light in her voice; there is light on her brow. He stole your card details. This she says almost proudly. Said he’d invest it wisely.

  I can’t help myself. Eighty-five grand’s worth of details! I scream.

  I stand up; the chair behind me is bolted to the floor and won’t move. Suddenly the thought of requiring Ostrich to further my ambitions seems dumb: I have all the inspiration that I need right here. The violent motion of spanking Julie across the face makes me fall to the side. I have lost my balance. Wanting to hit her again, I am instead hit. And not once. Without knowing what I’m doing, I have moved a step closer to Dott.

  Five.

  It’s a few days earlier that I stumble upon the idea of the books. I am chatting breeze with Carewith—he of the rationed intelligence—because breeze is all you can talk with the brere. Most of the time you can’t even chat shit with the brother: chatting shit at least contains a nugget of sense or wisdom on occasion. But Carewith’s engine has long since run out of petrol: too much skunk, on road, too many cocktails of medicinal alcohol and cider. So we’re chatting breeze: worthless air. Something about weekend breakfasts. When Carewith moves his lip and suddenly releases, not breeze, not shit, but reality. All of a sudden man chats me point blank: it hits me between the eyes.

  I was having a chat with that screw from the Cookery Class, he says.

  Why? I interrupt him immediately.

  He shrugs. Something to do innit. Wanted to hear his side of the story.

  His side, I tell Carewith, is pure bullshit. They’re denying all knowledge of it. And blood, they ain’t fucking around with any teasing still.

  I heard. Dusty Palestinian yoot, Carewith says, confirming the rumour. Said yoot bust a chuckle with said screw in good humour; said screw bust a knuckle on said yoot’s left femur. Yoot went down. The message? No jokes. The subject is serious.

  Turns out we’re from the same ends, Carewith tells me.

  It’s breeze. But sometimes a breeze contains dirt.

  Big deal, I say.

  Them’s bad boy ends, blood.

  So?

  So how does a man from our ends end up as a fucking screw of all things? Most mans’ ambition from our ends is not getting blazed with a nine-fucking-millimetre, cuz.

  It’s no more than a mild coincidence, but what Carewith says next makes the skin on the top of my head chill and tingle; it’s as though I’ve torn the caul and been reborn once again.

  Be it heard, cuz. The same ends as Meaney, as it happens.

  The remark is throwaway; the irony is that Carewith accepts it as breeze but it’s this simple statement that puts the rat among the pigs.

  I don’t know what root in the forest I’ve stumbled upon but I understand instinctively—or so I think—that it’s the root to a very big, gnarly old oak.

  Roller’s from the south coast, I argue.

  As the ignorant do when they are adamant about a fact, Carewith contends the point passionately: his brief argument back to me is almost hostile, in fact.

  Grew up on the south coast. Spent five years in my ends.

  Crime has neighbourhoods. It’s not the other way around. Crime is the landlord and a neighbourhood pays crime’s taxes and monthly protection. Crime replaces the lightbulbs in the streetlamps—but first crime smashes them out. Crime paints the fences a uniform council colour—but first crime slashes the metal with thickly penned graffiti. Crime closes down libraries. It was crime that chose me. I didn’t choose crime. Because I lived in crime’s neighbourhood; I lived in crime’s ends. The same ends as Roller.

  When Association Time ends I am delighted and frightened to be returned to my pad. I wait for the stereos to start competing for decibelage and then I know that I am as safe from interruption for the night as it’s possible to be. The line of thought I follow is like a whip, like a heart line.

  It can’t be a coincidence, can it? I’m starting to sweat.

  I’ve heard in the past—much as I dislike referring to the past—about such phenomena as mass hysteria and mass misdirection. And I think, there at my table, with my hair gels and unnecessarily stockpiled toothpastes (the market’s dead for toiletries) that these phenomena are what we’re visiting. He’s planted something, has Dott; I simply don’t know what yet. Or why. And there are other concerns pertaining. History says it all. You can convince an entire nation to believe in a murderous campaign: that’s a fact. It’s been proven. You can ask a lifeline to believe that it’s okay to delve for riches through the vaults of the under-valued. Not one motherfucker will raise an eyebrow, and you know it. How do you persuade the innocent that left is right? By mass hypnosis, I reckon; by mass hysteria, mass compulsion. Irrespective of my feelings about having been manipulated, I am certain that there was something in the air that we responded to and applauded.

  Thanking the Lord for the female menopause—the one that causes Miss Patterson to take such frequent toilet breaks—I use my computer and my few stolen minutes to research a portfolio of books on the subject. No longer do I flirt with Kate Thistle. She thinks she has done something to hurt me, but hey—you have to treat them mean to keep them keen. She wants to know what I’m doing but I refuse to tell her. By not forcing the issue, which she can certainly do, she makes me even more suspicious of her intentions. But I’m not scared of Miss Thistle anymore; it is strange that I ever was.

  Six.

  I’m approaching his cell in the Segregation Unit.

  Thank you for coming to see me, darling! Dott shouts.

  And I know that if I flip back his flap he’ll be there. Teeth or eyes to the meshed glass. I don’t even tell Dott to fuck off. Flanked on either side by my superstar minders, I continue to walk to my designated cell. I’m pulsing with anger and fear; but I have no intention of showing it to anyone. With good grace I will accept my Seg cell: its bucket, its mattress. And I will promise my advisers that I have learned my lessons and it won’t happen again. I will be a good boy. I will show anyone who wants to know that I’ve learned my lesson. And in secret I will plot my revenge.

  But Dott isn’t finished. Fancy seeing you here! he calls. And: Do you fancy going out tonight? he calls.

  Motherfucker, I whisper.

  The screw to my right agrees. Shut the fuck up, Dott! he shouts, and the taunts cease immediately. But I can feel him laughing behind the steel. When my cell is unlocked I say to the officers: I’m sorry, sir. And then again, turning slightly: I’m sorry, sir.

  For what?

  For having to listen to that from Dott, I say. It was for my benefit.

  The screw to my left—Peterson, I think his name is— regards my admission as a sign of something possible in the future.

  You two cunts got beef? he asks me and squashes up his face. Beef will entail a rethinking of my sleeping arrangements.

  I shake my head. Nothing serious, I tell him, hoping for it to be so.

  Only the night, I think, or the following nights, will say for sure.

  The door opens. I have seen inside a Segregation Unit cell on more than one occasion, on business, on my travels as a Library Redband. But viewing through a flap does not prepare you for the narrowness of the room, nor the low ceiling, the hum of the empty pot in the left far corner. Not since I arrived at Dellacotte have I experienced such a sensation of dread. I am wringing wet and starving and poor, let’s not forget. The sort of poverty that most people live with every day—I’m with you brothers.

  My cell is two away from Dott’s. The previous inhabitant has made his escape by creating a noose from a pillowcase a
nd getting transferred to the Psychiatric Wing of a prison forty miles away. His name is Henry. I won’t see him again, and I wonder if anyone is thinking in similar terms about me. The door closes. The chunky clunk of a heavy lock. I lie down on a mattress that smells of sweat and semen; I plump the pillow against the cold brick wall. There is nothing to do. That is why it’s called Seg.

  Night brings a different collection of noises. I’m used to music, the blur of late-night TV, and hollered conversations from cell to cell. I am not used to the wailing and the moaning of the yoots on this Wing. The pain; the endeavour. Never in my life have I heard young men suffering so. I’m trying to ride it; I’m trying to blow ignorant. It’s not easy.

  How has Dott done it? What he’s done is create a system of mass hypnosis and hallucination, so that at the beck and call of the bruv’s finger—or a signal of some kind—my cuzzes do what the fuck he wants them to. And I can live with that. I have heard more far-fetched: the yoot in the burka and the face- veil, pretending to be a Muslim matriarch and holding up the Post Office; the yoot whose dad works in an agency for security guards, getting a job and robbing a Woolworth’s depot of nine grand’s worth of kids’ clothing. It’s not the audacity that stymies me; it’s the not knowing that breaks my heart. I can’t wait any longer. In the middle of the night I call his name.

  Dott refuses to answer. I call again and the night-screw (face unknown, name unknown) bangs on my door and tells me to can it immediately. I leave it an hour before calling Dott’s name again. It’s four a.m. He doesn’t answer in words but in an action that makes me jump. He has created a swing-line from his bed sheet, using a roll of toilet paper as a weight. Like a raven the package thumps at my window. I get up off the floor and open the slits. The night air is chilly, blood. Dressed in nothing more than boxers and perspiration, I await his second swing. It comes but I miss it; I cannot reach out far enough. Increasingly riskily, awaiting another thump on the door, it’s not till the fourteenth swing, my right arm by now raw from friction with the slits, that I manage to take hold of what Dott is sending me. Stuffed inside the toilet roll is a pillowcase. I pull it out.