Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys (Will Self)

by Will Self

  The second story was a piece of well-sustained, naturalistic writing about two young black guys dealing crack in north-west London. The writer had done well with all the orthodox conventions of the short story, but then he'd got carried away and added magical realist elements that jibed. There was that, and there was the uneasiness of his spelling – he could never quite decide whether to come down on the side of phonetic transcription of non-standard English, or not. The result was far less accomplished than Cal hoped for when he began reading.

  The third story was the strangest in the whole batch, the most unsettling. Ostensibly a description of a man's intense love for his dead wife's cat, ‘Little Pussy’ was written with a close absorption into the minutiae of a solitary man's life that reminded Cal of Patricia Highsmith's style. There were other Highsmithian elements: the sense the writer imparted that awful things were happening – both physically and psychically – a little bit outside the story's canvas. The story was told in the first person – but the narrator wasn't simply unreliable, he was altogether non-credible as a witness to his own life. Nothing dramatic happened in the story – the man adapted his routines to those of the feline, and so mitigated his mourning for his wife – but when Cal tossed the typescript to one side, he realised it was one of the cleverest and most subtle portrayals of the affectless, psychopathic mind that he had ever read.

  At five that afternoon Cal called John Estes back. ‘Mr Estes? Cal Devenish here.’

  ‘Ah, Mr Devenish, any decision in the offing?’

  ‘Yuh – I think so. There's a short shortlist I have in mind – the stories by Cracknell, O'Toole and Greenslade – but I haven't decided on an overall winner as yet.’

  ‘That's not necessary – I only needed to know that the winner would be able to attend –’

  ‘And he will?’

  ‘Oh yes, no problem there.’

  At two o'clock the following afternoon Cal Devenish, wearing an unaccustomed suit and carrying a superannuated briefcase, met the secretary to the visitors’ board in the reception area of Wandsworth Prison. Estes was carrying a large bunch of keys; he was a small, dapper man who radiated considered concern. ‘It's a pleasure to meet you,’ Estes said proffering his manicured hand, ‘I enormously enjoyed Limp Harvest.‘

  ‘Thank you, thank you,’ Cal blustered – he hated references to his past success. ‘You're too kind.’

  ‘The inmates are also very much looking forward to talking with you –’

  ‘How many of them will be here?’

  ‘Ah, well, there's a thing.’ Estes paused to unlock a door and they passed out of reception and into a high walled yard. ‘By a great, good coincidence, the three inmates on your short shortlist are the only ones left here at Wandsworth – all the others had been transferred.’

  ‘That's lucky.’

  ‘Isn't it.’ Estes broke off again to unlock a gate, and they passed into a second high-walled yard.

  They were crunching across this expanse of gravel, under the slitted eyes of the cell windows in E Block, when Estes halted and turned to Cal. ‘Mr Devenish,’ he began hesitantly, ‘I don't want to confuse in any way, or unsettle you, but I did wonder if you noticed anything special about the three stories on your short shortlist?’

  Cal was nonplussed. ‘I'm sorry?’

  ‘If there was anything the authors seemed to have in common?’

  ‘Well.’ Cal mused for a few seconds, scrabbling to recall the stories he'd hurriedly flipped through in bed the previous day. ‘There was an element of err . . . how can I put it . . . sort of distance, almost a remoteness in all of them –’

  ‘I'm glad you noticed that,’ Estes cut in, ‘you see the thing is all three were written – purely coincidentally – by inmates who're under protection.’

  ‘Protection?’

  ‘Erm . . . yes, prisoners who're . . . erm . . . convicted sex offenders.’

  ‘I see.’ Cal began internally to rewrite his speech as they crunched on across the yard.

  ‘I thought I err . . . ought to tell you, because the prize giving is being held on F Wing. It's the block over there, outside the main prison, that's why we have to go through all these yards . . .’ Estes unlocked another gate with one of his lolly-sized keys. ‘F Wing is the clearing house for all protected inmates in Britain –’

  ‘Jesus!’ Cal blurted out. ‘You mean where we're headed is the biggest concentration of sex offenders in the country?’

  ‘Five hundred and forty, to be precise,’ Estes said with a limp smile, then he unlocked the door to the nonce wing.

  Gerry Mahoney came by Danny's cell to pick him up and take him to the prize giving. He already had Cracknell and Greenslade in tow. All three prisoners had done their best to spruce themselves up for the occasion, and Greenslade had, optimistically, starched creases into his prison-issue denims. The Wing was uncharacteristically busy today, knots of prisoners hung over the railings on the upper landings, and there was a large number of suited men milling around by the POs’ office.

  ‘Wass goin’ on?’ Danny asked Mahoney.

  ‘You’ re going on – those are all AGs come for the prize giving. You see, the actual cheque will be handed over by Judge Tomy, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, and all the staff here are expecting him to make a speech that isn't entirely focused on literature.’ The creative-writing class walked to the end of the wing, then began climbing the spiral stairs to the Education Room.

  Upstairs the desks and equipment had been tidied away and about forty chairs had been crushed into the room. By the time the four of them had taken their seats, near to the back, the rest were fully occupied. As well as the twenty-odd assistant governors, in regulation middle-management suitings, there were about fifteen uniformed POs and the Governor himself, who was accompanied by a white-haired, elderly man sporting a loud bow tie and a cashmere overcoat.

  “Tomy,’ Mahoney whispered to Danny ‘don't be fooled by his appearance – he's one of the most outspoken critics of the Home Office there's ever been. You wait – he'll give this lot a lambasting.’

  As if prompted by Mahoney, Judge Tomy now stood and took control of the proceedings. He welcomed them all to the Wing and then gave a fifteen-minute speech outlining every single thing that was wrong with the prison administration, from failure fully to end slopping out, to food lacking adequate nutrition. The Governor, the assistant governors and the prison officers all sat tight, sinister smiles on their thinned lips. They could do nothing – Tomy was the Inspector of Prisons, he was merely doing his job.

  Cal Devenish, who was sitting beside Judge Tomy at the front of the room, was amazed by the elderly man's combative vigour. This was an Inspector who took his remit seriously. But Cal was far more concerned about his role in things. It was easy to spot the three men who he'd shortlisted for the Wolfenden Prize – they were the only prisoners in the room, crushed in between the rows of their jailers. The young black prisoner was obviously the writer of the story about the crack dealers. He looked intelligent, but his expression was on the aggressive side of fierce. Cal felt threatened whenever this gaze fell on him.

  Next to the black guy sat an amiable-looking, white-haired man in his late fifties. Cal knew better than to be taken in by such superficial considerations, but it was really very hard to conceive of this man as being a serious sex offender. He might have been a flasher of some sort, Cal hypothesised, but not a truly revolting nonce. Anyway, by contrast, the man who was sitting next to him was so obviously the real McCoy that he made everyone else in the room look like Peter Pan by comparison. This individual's hideous countenance was the fleshly equivalent of a wall in a public urinal, the individual tiles grouted together with shit. He was terrifying. Cal pegged him as the science-fiction satirist.

  Danny sat staring at Cal Devenish. So this was the man who was going to decide his fate? This lanky, bearded thing in a black suit, who so resembled a white equivalent of . . . the Fates. They were back. They lingered in the corners of the ro
om. They hissed and cackled, updating Danny's doom on this of all days. Danny was paralysed. He looked at the Governor, willing him to look up and see this model prisoner, this aspirant writer so worthy of transfer. The Governor remained staring abstractedly at a broken lampshade which dangled above his head.

  Cal Devenish got up to make his speech. He voiced some platitudinous – but for all that heartfelt – observations on the liberating, empowering capabilities of writing, especially for those who're in jail. Cal was going to analyse the three shortlisted stories in considerable detail, but the nonce revelations had put him off his stride. He confined himself to mentioning the strong points of all three, before concluding limply that ‘Little Pussy’ exhibited all the hallmarks of a compelling moral ironist. Cal had no hesitation therefore in awarding the Wolfenden Prize for Prison Writing to . . . Philip Greenslade.

  Cal Devenish almost gagged when Philip Greenslade was within a few paces of him – the rot of the man's corrupt soul was that strong-smelling. Cal felt even sicker when he had to shake Greenslade's hand – it felt like the clamp of a laboratory retort stand, only thinly upholstered with flesh.

  ‘Thank you so very much.’ Greenslade's tone was wheedling, despite there being nothing to wheedle. ‘I can't tell you how much I value your judgement . . .’ He gripped Cal's hand a little tighter, and Cal thought he might scream. ‘I so look forward to having a proper discussion with you about literature when all of this is over.’

  Cal realised that he'd given the prize to the wrong man – there hadn't been a particle of ironic distance in ‘Little Pussy’: the author was a psychopath.

  The Governor turned to his deputy who was sitting beside him. ‘Is that the Greenslade who's always petitioning for a transfer to a cat. C? The sickening nonce who did that murder?’

  ‘Yes, Governor, that's the man.’

  ‘Well, since he's won this bloody prize, let's use it as an excuse to get shot of the tedious bugger. Prepare the papers for his transfer when we get back to the office.’

  Danny was very nearly in tears – he simply couldn't believe it. How could this twat Devenish have chosen Greenslade's story over his own, it made no sense at all. The only way Danny could prevent himself from crying out was by staring straight ahead and gripping the back of the chair in front of him as tightly as he could.

  Gerry Mahoney tried to bank down Danny's distress. ‘I've no idea what got into Cal Devenish,’ he said. ‘I know him slightly and I've always respected his literary judgement. Mind you, if it's any consolation I've heard it rumoured that he has a bit of a drug problem. Perhaps that's what queered it – he couldn't cope with the realism in your story . . .’

  But Danny wasn't in the mood for a post-mortem. He got up and began to shoulder his way to the front of the room. His cell was preferable to this shit hole full of screws. At the door, in his haste to get out, he collided with a tall suit, which turned to reveal that it was owned by the Governor. ‘Sorry, sir,’ Danny muttered.

  ‘That's all right – ah! It's O'Toole, isn't it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, well done, O'Toole, it seems you took my advice on committing yourself to a useful course of study. Mr Mahoney tells me you have a genuine talent – see that you cultivate it.’

  ‘I will, sir.’ The Governor turned to depart, but once he'd gone a couple of paces he turned back to face Danny.

  ‘And O'Toole.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Better luck next year.’

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Praise for Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys

  Title

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Contents

  The Rock of Crack As Big As The Ritz

  Flytopia

  A Story For Europe

  Dave Too

  Caring, Sharing

  Tough, Tough Toys For Tough, Tough Boys

  Design Faults in The Volvo 760 Turbo: A Manual

  The Nonce Prize