by David Mathew
Come on, Dott. Show me.
Eventually it is morning. I must have slept because I can see and taste the dream that lingered longest, lingered hardest. In it I am flying again—flying towards the oily water of the Oasis. When I get there I pay with coins into a slot, once I’ve seated myself on the hard wooden bench on board the rowboat. The computer only knows two directions: to the Prison Ship—also called Oasis, as Dott reminds me in my sleep—and back again. The ship holds two hundred prisoners. It does not move. Looming quickly in my dream, the black walls of the ship, as high it seems as the walls of the nick in which I’m locked. There is no way to climb the bulwarks or the gunwales. I am stranded here, unless someone throws me down a rope. And if someone throws me down a rope it must mean I am a prisoner. Someone throws me down a rope.
Rise and shine, Alfreth, calls Screw Jones. My door is open. Not like you to need a wake up call, son.
Sick, sir.
Well you’ll be needing your Coco Pops then, won’t you, for energy.
Yes, sir.
In our batches of ten at a time we fall in line at the canteen door, near the Prison Officers’ main office on the Wing. I collect my cereal, my cube of juice (straw removed), and my carton of milk. I return to my pad. Immediately after eating I am sick into my sink. I clean the mess up and wash my hands, oxters and groin.
I am ready for work, but Screw Jones says: Are you sure you want to go back to duties today, Alfreth?
That’s twice now in the space of half an hour I haven’t heard him approaching my door. The first time he even gets as far as opening it without my noticing him in the vicinity; the second time the door has been left wide.
You look peaky, son.
Not sleeping well, sir, I tell him.
You could have fooled me, son. Jones laughs. We could hear you snoring from the Staff Mess. Kicking and grunting, you were.
Someone throws me down a rope. I start to climb, and with many a kick and with many a grunt I make progress. I can now smell more than the oil on the water; I can smell the confined aromas of two hundred lags in close quarters. The smell is nauseating. My powers of flight having abandoned me, I continue to climb. I reach the bulwark. There is no one to help me board ship. No one on deck either. The ship has spat out its inhabitants like the vile, wretched commodities they are. Deathly silence. No, not silence—I can hear the contaminated water lapping against the prison; I can hear the gentle swish and low hum of a motor as the computerised rowboat moves back to its points of origin. I am alone. Utterly on my tod. Until a yowling crosses the sky. The noise, so sudden, so loud, makes me start; instinctively I duck my head. It’s an aircraft speeding overhead, through the priceless blue. Dott’s words about the war raging return—as soon as I see the full stop dropping from the sky. I know what this is. The full stop swells into an inkblot; the inkblot puddings into a golf ball, even though it’s going to drop a long way from where I’m standing. Explosion is enormous. Water climbs high into the scorched air, dampening it down; a series of waves rocks the ship, as large and sturdy and apparently unmoveable as it is. Blades of fire chop along through these new currents, attracted by the oil. Fire sniffing at the oil pools and smears like an animal going about hunting business; fire eating water, like a parasite eating its host. Slow motion. Then fast.
For God’s sake, boy!
Someone is screaming and yelling at me.
Get below deck! They’re fighting again!
The face I see, contorted with anger and misplaced concern. A hand waving me towards its owner. It’s a door leading down below deck. Someone has risked his own health, maybe sanity, to knock some sense into me. He is beckoning me towards safety. I take the advice—slide on the oily water that has splashed over onto the planks; tumble headfirst down the stairs, nearly knocking my rescuer onto his arse as I go. He breaks my fall. Pain is like frost up and down my arms; it takes me a few seconds to recover, to take stock. Stifling heat. Reptile house stench. I straighten up; pick my bones up off the floor, fully conscious of eyes on me. There is no conversation; no murmurs, no reproof. Silent men in gangs, some standing, some sitting, all staring at me. A hundred men? Some craning for a better view. Two hundred? Now jostling: want to see me. Outside, closer than the first, a second bomb detonates. The ship is rocked, but down below decks the imprint on our reality is not so strong. A few people are knocked a metre or so to the side; nothing serious. Absurdly, there now comes the consternated quacking of a duck, from above.
Welcome back, says the man who called me down.
Welcome back.
It’s a peculiar way, I think, of addressing me. The sentence belongs to Kate Thistle; I have arrived in the Library, shop Movements having begun.
Feeling better? she asks.
Than what?
She appears confused. Than you have been?
Yeah, I’m fine. Where’s Angela?
Miss Patterson has just popped to the Cookery Class to beg, steal or borrow some teabags, Kate replies. We’ve gulped our way through a box in the last day or two. It’s been boring without you, Billy. She smiles.
Kate, what are you talking about? Miss Patterson’s only been back at work a day. She was ill, remember?
No, Billy, you were ill. Miss Patterson’s been back all week.
What day is it, Kate? I ask.
Friday.
I’ve lost two days. I remember Cookery on Tuesday.
You were ill, Kate replies, a little bit hesitantly.
He’s got to me, Kate, I say to her. The bastard.
Language, Alfreth. Miss Patterson has entered her domain; the door is open, always, until the first class or Wing visit of the day. In her left hand she carries the kettle she has filled in the Cookery Gov’s place of work; in her right, a brown clutch of prison issue economy teabags.
You know I don’t like language like that in this room.
Sorry, Miss.
Could you make the tea, please, Alfreth?
Of course, Miss. What else would you like me to do today, Miss?
I have to confess: I am desperate to do some work—to do anything to rid my brain of the thought that Dott has paid me a visit, first footed me no less (Happy New Year to you too, cunt!) as the first one over the threshold. I am not a victim. I am not a victim in the way that the women he assaulted are his victims—not even close to the same thing—but I feel violated nonetheless.
Miss Patterson’s over-zealous bladder seems to have righted itself. I keep offering to brew up more tea, in order to make her want to go—even though in my unremembered absence the Staff Ladies toilet on this floor has been repaired and a quick trip to drop her knickers won’t give us half as much time to talk as we require. But every second counts. I wanted a run-up. Man need a run-up: to Fridays. Friday is the day F Wing visits the Library. Puppydog Wing. Therefore, maybe Dott. As the morning progresses I realise that I both do and don’t want to see him. Choice isn’t mine to make, anyway. He doesn’t arrive.
He got twisted up innit, says a yoot called I don’t know. Pressing the night bell all night. Sounded like panic attacks.
Don’t sound like him, I answer, making a show of returning the Prison Poetry books back to the shelf.
Why, you know him then? I’m asked.
Well as I know any cunt on Puppydog Wing.
That’s fighting talk, Redband.
I shrug again. Start it up. See who does Seg: me or you.
We both will, and you know it. Loss of TV.
I don’t watch TV, four-eyes.
What am I doing? I wonder, picking a scrap with a dilapidated granny batterer and handbag thief. And no one’s gonna see me throw the first punch.
I dare you.
For a second I think he’s going to cry. I am certain of what he’s about to say, before he says it. We’re not all rapists on that Wing, you know?
I d
idn’t say you were.
We are Vulnerable Prisoners.
I know that.
So why would you say something like that?
Like what? Like I know Dott as well as anyone on your Wing?
That’s not how you put it, Redband.
Pardon my manners. Excuse my gutter tongue. Now get away from me, you dirty oaf. Stop trying to make friends with normal criminals.
To my surprise he moves away, feigning a spontaneous interest in the atlases and Who’s Who? I don’t know why I’ve done what I’ve just done. I am angry and frustrated, and these things don’t help. So Dott’s been beaten up, has he? Good. Tired to the core, I execute the remainder of my morning duties in all but total silence, confidently not bringing up further antagonistic utterances, and in fact only speaking when I’m directly spoken to. I make the tea. Miss Patterson is sitting pretty, not moving an inch. Maybe she’s got a piss-bag, a wet-bag. What do you call them? When you just go down your leg, in a tube. I’m tempted to offer her one of her own gins, just to speed up the process a little.
At eleven-forty, the screws’ radios start to bleat and whistle. The morning session is coming to a close, Movements are about to begin.
Papa Alpha to Charlie Two. . . and Charlie Two answers in the tiffany-thin code it’s assumed we’re all too pigshit-thick to decipher.
There’s no time. In another couple of minutes it’ll all be over until Monday. I can’t wait that long. The Library door is anchored open with a small table on which sit what remains of a pile of Inside Times newspapers— free to any con fast enough to get a copy. Charlie Two today is a young female screw. She leans into the room.
Ready, Redband? she asks. We’re off.
Dejected I say, See you next week, Miss—the singular form of the noun intended to embrace both members of the staff I’m leaving behind.
Billy, don’t forget your book! Kate calls when I’m at the door.
Holding it out in front of her, she takes the few necessary strides in my direction. I have not issued out a book. I have plenty to read in my pad that I do not read without having another addition to the pile stamped.
With a smile I accept it and say quietly, Call me Alfreth in front of Angela.
Kate nods. I take the book.
And call her Miss Patterson, she responds.
Safe, I tell Kate, thereby thanking her for reminding me not to leave the book behind. I don’t even dare read the title in case Miss Patterson sees me doing so and starts to wonder whatever an old girl starts to wonder when she finds her career stalled in a rat-infested shit- hole such as Dellacotte Young Offenders. It’s only outside I dare glance at the cover.
I’ve been given a copy of Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
Blood quickens. While acknowledging the Wogwuns and occasional hand-slaps of inside-friends, I make a beeline for my pad. Because you know what? I got a memory, rudeboy. Got a memory, cuz. Since I’ve been Library Redband I must have seen the list of available titles a thousand times or more. Not once—not once in my memory—have I ever seen a copy of an Agatha Christie novel on the shelves, or even on the screen of availables. Not once. So where has this come from? From on the out.
It’s a relief when the screw locks me in. It’s a hassle to wait for my call to collect lunch—so much do I want to open the book. I don’t dare. Trembling slightly, I claim ownership of my Friday-treat baguette (extra filling). Fuck. It’s Friday, I keep forgetting—this means there’ll be Canteen, where those who have paid for them from their spends are able to get chocolate, sweets, crisps and noodles. I myself have a collection to make. Last week I ordered extra packets of cup-a-soup, back when I used to get hungry on a regular basis. This means Kate’s book will have to wait even longer to be opened.
A door being locked never sounded so sweet. Outside my open window—open despite the nip in the air—a couple of ducks seem to sound pleased on my behalf. Their quacks are the same as applause.
Three.
Ask him one question.
Card in hand, I queue for the telephone. It’s Saturday, just after lunch. I intend, at my own undoubtedly exorbitant cost, to call Julie. Mobile phone, naturally; it’s hard to think of Julie actually having an address because she’s never at home. She lives on the street. Maybe literally. Who knows? Now that that Bailey waste has done a hop, skip and jump with my money, what’s Julie living on? There’ll be benefits of course, the usual handouts, but still.
The D in the booth is called Finer. He seems to have accumulated about an eon’s worth of phone credit. Through the plexiglass I can hear him in a mumbled fashion going on about what food he’s been eating. I want to bang on the door and say It’s not important, save your money. Or say I only need a minute or two, could you call her back?, for I’m assuming he’s talking to his Mumsy. Who else would want to know details like that?
Yes, he’s getting plenty of exercise. Yes, he’s keeping himself out of fights (an out-and-out lie, by the way). And yes, his chances of parole look solid. Which is bullshit: no one ever gets paroled from Dellacotte YOI.
Even the ducks outside, dropping black messages wherever they waddle, are serving life sentences: either Mandatory, Discretionary, Automatic, or Imprisonment for Public Protection—the old IPP, bless it, and save all those who sail in it. All I want to know is if Julie has booked her visit with Dott. After time out of mind I get to ask. One thing about Julie is, she never turns her mobile off. Never. She always takes the call. In the cinema, in the shower—more than once she’s spoken to someone when she and I have been having sex. The first time this happens is offensive; the second time onwards you realise, ah, well we all have our quirks. There she was, riding me on top and discussing her sister-in-law’s hen night. It’s possible she’s having sex right now, I suppose, as she answers. I don’t bother to identify myself—she knows my voice.
Did you book it? I ask.
Booked it and done it.
Pardon?
I’ve been in already. Yesterday, Julie tells me. I didn’t have to wait long for a visit appointment because no one’s been to see him yet.
You travelled all the way up yesterday? I ask.
Yeah. It’s what you wanted me to!
Well, yeah I did. Didn’t think it get done so fast.
You sound disappointed, she says in a disappointed tone of her own; and I know that she is trying to please me—to make amends. She must have driven through the very early hours. Visits start at ten.
It’s stupid, I admit. I wish I’d known you were coming.
You weren’t answering your phone, she tells me with sarcasm.
Okay. Do you ask the question?
Yes. How do you spend your time? I have to say, Billy, if it wasn’t you I might have thought you were going a bit stir crazy in there.
I am.
But then again, if it wasn’t you I wouldn’t have agreed in the first place. That’s a compliment, by the way.
Thank you.
Oh, and Patrice is fully recovered, thanks for asking.
Not now, Julie. What does he have to say?
Not coming to see us then? she taunts.
Julie, please, I have about two minutes of credit on this fucking thing. The phone just eats it up. If you really want a row, wait till next time, eh?
She waits for a second or two. The second piece of telephone etiquette that Julie religiously observes is this: she will never put the phone down in anger or disgust. Quite correctly, she sees this as a vilely rude thing to do.
Okay, she says. I had to make some notes. How long have you got?
I told you! A couple of minutes!
Keep your hair on, Billy! Fucking hell—I’m doing this for you!
I apologise. Please tell me, Julie, what he said. I can’t speak to him and I would really, really like to know what he said.
He
talked about energy. She leaves a huge pause.
Still maintaining the status quo, temper-wise, I urge her to continue.
First of all he congratulated you on a good question. At this point I’m like lost? What’s good about it? But anyway, I don’t really wanna know. So he says: I’m saving my time—and other people’s time—what does that mean?’
Slang, I lie. It’s new code, Julie. Carry on.
Oh Billy, you’re not planning something for when you hit road, are you? she asks with a definite moan of worry running through her words.
Don’t be concerned, I try to reassure her. Nothing illegal.
Then why’s it in code?
Please.
All right, all right, don’t throw your rattle out of the pram, Billy. He’s saving his time and yours and other people’s, like Prometheus did with fire. I won’t ask. Then he laughed—he found the whole bloody thing hilarious, to be honest—he’s quite a happy-go-lucky bloke, really, innee? What’s he in for?
Rape, is what I want to say—the truth. Death by dangerous driving.
Someone die? Julie asks.
Yeah, someone he had beef with. No one innocent. What else does he have to say? Saving time, Prometheus fire, what else?
He’s had it with stealing water. Whatever that means. So he’s going to steal as much time as he can, till he’s full like a tick full of blood. He’s going to—wait a minute, let me turn over the paper—he’s going to save it then kill it. Does that make any sense to you, Billy?
Not much, I admit.
I kept asking him if you’d know what he was talking about but he just smiled, says Julie. Said—he couldn’t keep going on the way he was, smaller and smaller—whatever that means—because it’s a circle he starts again.
Didn’t think of that.
Think of what?
Why he might be frightened of getting younger as we see it, older as he sees it, Julie. Because it doesn’t stop for him, you see? A million years of bee-stings. Prometheus on the rock. Eternal punishment, Julie! That’s why he wants to go back to being young. Well, old; but young for him. Well, he’s still old—but his years on the planet are less, at that end.