Bang

  ‘My eyes? It’s your eyes you should be worried about. Would you like me to fetch my Voltaire? I will be right back.’

  Cagee looked at Delilah, gulped immediately, and bent over, lowering his trousers as he did so.

  ‘Perhaps the janitor would prefer to avert his gaze,’ suggested the Whipping Boy. Delilah did so and further evaluated the surroundings, much changed since her last stay, and tried to drift into the promise of release, to be with her soon – all being well.

  ‘Ow!’ said Cagee as the cane hit flesh, reporting like a gunshot.

  Delilah’s thoughts jarred on that phrase, all being well. It didn’t sit comfortably down here in the System.

  ‘Ow-wow!’ said Cagee,

  Delilah crossed her fingers.

  ‘Oh,’ said Cagee.

  The action of crossing one’s fingers didn’t bring much hope either.

  ‘Ooh,’ said Cagee.

  That was the thing about the System, Delilah realised, there just never came a moment, not one half-second, when you could feel okay.

  ‘Arrrh,’ said Cagee.

  And life, surely, wasn’t about not feeling okay.

  ‘Arrh-goo,’ said Cagee.

  What was the point of life, if you spent it locked up?

  ‘Uh,’ said Cagee, sort of, and snuckered once, and then again.

  ‘Why is he snoring, Janitor? Is he attempting to make a fool out of me?’

  ‘He is asleep,’ said Delilah, speaking through her hand.

  ‘Tell him to wake up. Oh forget it. I’m bored of this flimsy thing.’ The Whipping Boy threw down the cane with a clatter and stalked off. ‘Gentle, oh Gentle,’ he cried, suddenly in tears, and in a voice that found in itself new obstructions now it was freshly broken, ‘where are-ARE you? Where have you G-gone? Oh, Jonathon, I m-hiss you, miss you-Hoo!’ He turned a corner crying still, and bellowed at some as-yet unseen person or persons, who by the sounds of it got in his way resulting in a loud crash, then his laments moved off again, fading out, like hiccups.

  ‘Wake up, Cagee,’ said Delilah, coaxing the semi-naked, bent, disfigured, dozy Headmaster back into life.

  Waking, he said, ‘What happened? Who pulled my pants down? You? Why did you do that? You dirty whore. Is it my scrotum you’re after? Why? To see the join? I should put you over my knee and, and spank you.’ He wielded his stumps at her. ‘I don’t know why they have a join making them look like they’ve been moulded in a factory, so don’t try asking. Got it? Hello?’

  ‘You fell asleep again.’

  ‘With my pants down? I don’t think so. Hoh no.’

  ‘Yes, with your pants down, you fell asleep. And that’s how you caused the escalator accident that lost Officer JJ Jeffrey his eyes – which I bet were cruel eyes. You have a medical condition. Didn’t you see anyone about it?’

  ‘I don’t see what business it is of yours. Don’t look at me like that. Stop it. I can’t bear it. Oh, oh all right, Janitor, I will tell you. After a long wait, a very long wait, I went to the Public Body of Health. I had a special appointment. I went with my friend, a lady. She had long legs and an argumentative nature. There was a consultation with the medical experts, then they asked her in, the lady, for her opinion as someone who knew me and had seen me nod off. She said she thought it was all in my mind. Never heard again from the experts after that. Then, a few months later, after buying the lady a pacifier, I was on my way home, going up the escalator. There was a bang. The next thing I know I was here, in the System, in a Remand 111 cage. I was very frightened. I was tricked into the cage, I had my hands broken off when they closed the doors on me. The whole of Remand 111 was very cruel to me. They said they hated me. Why? It was horrible. One day suddenly they all died, food poisoning, dodgy chicken. I was kidnapped by the Center of Disinformation and forced to lecture in a language I could not understand. But saddest of all is I’ve not spoken to my friend up there since. I miss her. Why does my bottom hurt, Janitor?’

  The four workmen came along carrying a different shaped load this time with its blanket bunched on top where presumably it had been placed after its collision with the Whipping Boy. Under this bundle in a clear, and by the looks of it tightly sealed, casket lay a skeleton. The skeleton had an uncertain smile. Delilah didn’t know why the skeleton looked at her with this familiar look. Maybe all skeletons looked not like you knew them but like they knew you.

  ‘Easy as you go,’ said the foreman, balancing his corner of the casket on a knee and reaching for the door handle.

  ‘Fantastic,’ exclaimed Cagee. ‘Every school needs a good skeleton for anatomy lessons. What a surprise. Somebody somewhere’s looking after us. This is to be a school of scholastic excellence, for sure. It’ll rocket to the top of the Authority’s School League tables in no time.’

  ‘Mind yourself, squire, coming through. Nice gloves.’ Sniggering, the workmen entered the room extending no invitation this time to Delilah nor to Cagee to follow. Cagee tried the door after them but found it locked and said, ‘They want it to be just right for us. They don’t want to disappoint the new headmaster. They are probably quite intimidated by me, which is why they would not address me directly. We’ll come back later, when it’s ready. I’m so excited. Are you? Hungry? This way.’ He pulled his trousers up, with difficulty, but, recomposed now, led Delilah away with a beckon of shoulder. ‘In here,’ he said some minutes later. ‘I’m sure it’s round here somewhere.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Let’s try these doors. I hope they’re right. They’ve painted over all the lilac arrows, so you can’t find your way around anymore. I’d never noticed them before. Not till someone pointed out they’d gone, then I remembered blemishes on the walls and realised they must have been the arrows. I also remember when I was on a stretcher once and … but that is another story.’

  They entered through two sets of doors that gave the impression they should have been locked: Cagee suggested that there was an air of lawlessness today in the System, what with it being the first day of school.

  ‘Coor,’ said Delilah when they got inside, and let out a low whistle.

  ‘This isn’t the café,’ complained Cagee. ‘Come on out. We shouldn’t be here.’

  But Delilah had already sat down on a bench, her chin hanging off her mouth as she looked around. To all intents and purposes she was now ‘outside’. Not outside as in beyond System but outside as in beyond the roofed world up there, in an outside that once had existed and according to various rumours still did in certain places (explorers rarely returned). It was fake, of course, down here. But what fake. Here were blue skies, views of rolling countryside, mown grass soft underfoot, water tinkling into a pond, tiled paths, neat flowerbeds, flashing in the air that could have been dragonflies, and a smell – a smell she’d never smelt before: nature (reconstituted nature, maybe, but overwhelming nonetheless). ‘Come on,’ repeated Cagee, urgently, ‘we must get out of here quick. Look.’ He pointed at a brass plaque in the flowerbed in which dewy flowers sparkled in the Authority’s sunlight. Bees buzzed in the background. Delilah read the plaque but wouldn’t budge, or couldn’t. These were named the Gentle Memorial Gardens. Now they heard echoes, gardeny echoes, and then a male group, in stripy uniforms and matching caps, appeared through a flowering wisteria pergola, sipping light golden liquid that spat fine spray from tall glasses, holding their heads back high as they drank.

  ‘Somebody must have thought this up in the middle of the night,’ hissed Delilah, under a spell she didn’t want to shift. ‘This is just too good to be true. I could stay here forever.’

  ‘Those must be the prefects I ordered,’ said Cagee, suddenly ecstatic, and was about to call them over when Delilah tugged his arm, nearly pulling off a feather glove: she’d spotted the Whipping Boy, sat muscularly blubbing on a bench next to a figure with his back to them. They agreed then to leave. They took the long way back to the new school, upon Delilah’s suggestion. Something had changed for her now. She had to get out of
here, get back her life. She had to go free, it had become imperative. After experiencing the Gentle Memorial Gardens she couldn’t let the Authority keep her locked up. The flower scents remaining in her nose confirmed this, and showed her what she was missing. She tried snorting their torment out. But just sneezed and made her eyes itch and water.

  16 – A Moment Before School

  The pair arrived back at the new school a couple of minutes early before the school opened at noon. ‘See how many have turned up,’ said Cagee proudly.

  One shuffled towards them and nervously asked Delilah, ‘Is it ready yet, can we go in?’

  ‘Any minute now,’ she said, ‘be patient.’

  ‘I’m nervous,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you nervous?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It’ll be fine.’

  Apparently surprised by this, he shuffled away, a doubtful look on his face.

  ‘There must be hundreds of them,’ whispered Cagee, standing with his stumps in his trousers’ four pockets, his upper lip upturned in satisfaction.

  ‘Hello, petal,’ said Poy Yack pushing through, knocking people flying. ‘Quite a day for you, eh. Want to huddle for a couple of minutes and talk the case over? Or later?’

  Attempting to convey its seriousness, Delilah said, ‘More important is that you Life the money man my court date. Have you had a chance to do that yet? Please tell me you have.’

  ‘Oh poppet, so sorry, quite forgot. In one ear, out the other. Yes, I did promise. And you importuned me, too, didn’t you. I haven’t been importuned for a good long while, I can tell you that, and I was so busy thinking exactly that that I quite misplaced the actual purpose of your importuning. How funny.’ He laughed enthusiastically and offered Delilah a bright look. ‘Soon as I get back to the office I’ll do it. Won’t be today, too much on, I’m afraid, and I’ve got this blessed party tonight. I say, have you just been to the Gentle Memorial Gardens, your feet are wet. Quite extraordinary, aren’t they? Transporting. So tranquil, too. I’m quite beside myself after the stroll I took. Ah, door’s opening. In we go.’ Poy Yack checked his Life for the time, gave Delilah a strange look, and pushed through the crowd, elbowing violently the pupils, who speedily apologised when he said he’d see them in court if they didn’t get out of his way. In this crowd were one or two, what Delilah took to be, pupils, who were apparently encouraging other, what Delilah took to be, pupils to conspire in some sort of mischief. Upon seeing Delilah they averted their eyes and hid charts or sometimes little books in their pockets. Then they stood there whistling and looking at the ceiling. If Delilah succeeded in engaging them they challenged her with a stare of ‘What of it?’

  Odd, but it was time for school.

  ‘Let the pupils in first,’ Cagee instructed her. ‘You are janitor and must get used to the fact that, no matter how much you abhor it, they rank above you. They are your superiors. You’re worthless. And don’t forget about that vomit behind the radiator. At least I hope it’s only vomit.’ Delilah waited.

  Delilah entered the school at the back of the queue, shaking her head.

  17 – A School?

  She gazed around. Something wasn’t, she didn’t think, quite right about this school. That’s strange. Hey? What the …?

  And in the next instant, her hopes of exiting the System took on a far bleaker aspect. A clock struck 12 noon and a bailiff cried, ‘COURT IN SESSION.’ He straightened his stripy cap and sat down, but sprang up quickly as if he’d sat on something sharp, which he hadn’t.

  Out loud, and in the complete silence that had done that thing silence sometimes did and descend, Delilah’s fear spoke simply and clearly. It said, ‘Oh fuck.’

  ‘Language,’ screamed the Superintendent, from up high, and rising, in what looked like a hydraulic rostrum. ‘Seize the defendant and wash her mouth out.’ Two stripe-uniformed bailiffs approached Delilah. Their stripes joined and ran in and out of each other’s sleeves when they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, weirdly cojoining them, eliciting from an officer in the audience a proud designer’s smile. When the bailiffs stepped apart, these stripes stretched between them to form an elastic cradle in which they ensnared Delilah and relocated her to the dock, pushing a toilet-type brush in and out of her mouth as they did so, telling her they’d like to take her brain out and rinse it too. The brushing opened the healed closure of her extracted tooth, and her tongue started feeling around of its own accord, sucking pain out of the hole.

  ‘Not a good start, defendant,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Such language undermines society. What do you suppose would happen were we all to go round indiscriminately uttering such obscenities? I do not know exactly, but let me assure you on good authority, not the Authority, mind, that the results would be wholly detrimental. New swearwords would need to invented, for a start, to replace the old ones diluted by overuse, and what new words could possibly challenge words of such ancestry? No, this just cannot be allowed to happen and in this courtroom it shall not. We haven’t refurbished Remand 111 and turned it into a grand court simply for you to come swaggering in and swear your head off dressed like some oiky manual labour in his worn clobber with a gaping zipper and turn the world of obscenities on its head. Besides, you knew your court date approached, there it was on the horizon of your incarceration – what made you think it wouldn’t arrive on your twentieth birthday? No, I cannot possibly see what you have to swear about. So today has come, and, guess what, here it is. Say Hello. Best get it over and done with, wouldn’t you say, and begin your sentence. Sooner it gets started, sooner it’ll be over. Then you can get on with your life. Though this may become irrelevant should you be released after your death. High probability of that, given the charges. So let’s have another look and see what you’re charged with.’ The Superintendent consulted information before him. ‘Hum,’ he said, ‘that’s quite a list. If you’d come before me earlier, we’d have nipped this in bud and you wouldn’t be here now. If you weren’t here now, nor would I be. Do you think I want to be here? It’s your fault I’m here. It’s your fault we’ve had to go to all this trouble and expense. It’s your fault we must ultimately recoup costs from you. Even if you’re innocent. Which I think you know full well you’re not. What do you have to say to that?’

  A stripy bailiff prodded Delilah and she opened her mouth, but instead of saying what she’d intended to say – that she’d committed no crime before entering the System, other than a minor traffic violation, which was only because a crime had been committed against her, and that everything was unfair, everything – she unintentionally blew a caustic bubble of soap, then shut her mouth again when the Superintendent smacked down his black gavel (made from her film The Murderer) and glared his ugly eyes down at her. This looked like being another bad day. Possibly the worst of her life. And she’d had a few of those recently.

  He continued, while pulling at his eyebrows and yanking out the longest hairs, which he measured with callipers, ‘I see the prosecution is ready, as ever. May the prosecution be commended, especially esteemed lawyer Lawyer Poy Yack, whom it is always a pleasure to set eyes on, a man whose presence alone causes about my person a bristling sensation, which, though I have spoken with experts about, goes largely unexplained. Good afternoon, sir, I trust you are well?’

  ‘Very well and very rich, thank you, Superintendent. Also, in the prime of my career.’

  ‘You certainly are. Not that the same can be said of the defence team, whose section remains fully empty. Such complete vacancy screams at me and says on the part of the defendant that she does not care. What truly innocent defendant comes into the trial of their life undefended, I ask you. Not you, Lawyer Poy Yack, you understand, I don’t ask you, you have better things to do than respond to such rhetoric, but I ask the court in general. No, the lack of a team, of even one sole representative, speaks loudly indeed of the defendant’s guilt. “I do not need defending,” it says, “because I am guilty of all charges laid before me.” Such a slovenly attitud
e makes me wonder if I shouldn’t here and now cancel the whole show and skip to sentencing. “Take me away and lock me in a cell, why don’t you. Send me down, bang me up, I’ll do my clink.” But a trial has always been considered entertainment. Even when the outcome is already decided the tension remains, and I am sure that the defendant, like you the audience, whom I now address, can feel it.’ The audience murmured, and clapped, and those who had brought them opened their packed lunches. ‘It is not so much the outcome that intrigues but the route there that compels us to follow proceedings. I, on behalf of the Authority, extend my warmest welcome to all in the audience and trust that you enjoy this afternoon, long billed as one of the year’s legal highlights. Quite a turn out, I must say. I see over there the teacher with the penchant for cabbages, I do hope you, too, madam, enjoy this matinee performance of your troublesome ex-pupil. Everybody, welcome. The preliminaries are over. Evidence is our next port of call.’

  The audience clapped loudly. But too loudly, because the Superintendent now put his hands over his ugly ears and said, ‘Bailiffs, count the audience immediately.’

  ‘980,’ said one, a moment later.

  ‘1024,’ said another, a moment after that.

  ‘1064,’ said yet another, as more people filed in.

  ‘1100,’ said the next.

  ‘Bailiffs, reduce the number to 100. 100, I say. The Center of Disinformation has provided strict attendance figures guidelines for such events. A maximum number of one hundred is permitted or the information released risks acquiring a dangerous accuracy a high-numbered audience’s consensus of opinion might grant it. 1000 people, leave now. Get out. OUT.’