The Laundry Basket

by G. M. C. Lewis

  “No honestly Sue, I’m fine. I’m thinking of lowering my meat intake.” Billy looks at Annabel, who is stood to the side of the van, looking across the mist on the heath and smiling as she drinks her coffee.

  “Very nice to meet you Annabel, thanks for your help,” says Billy.

  “You too Billy, thanks for the coffee.”

  They look at each other a moment and then Billy offers his hand. She shakes it.

  “Right, I’ve gotta go, cheers. Seeya Sue.”

  He heads back to the house. Pedro is sound asleep in front of a shopping channel in the living room, but Hendo must have gone up to bed. He lays a blanket on Pedro and turns off the TV. He showers, drinks a protein shake, then makes coffee and eggs. Once that’s down, he spends the rest of the morning helping a fuzzy-headed contingent clean up the after-party mess from the street. At 1pm he puts together his gym kit, gets his tracksuit on, goes up to Pete’s room and knocks. A moment later Pete opens the door, as always wearing his cowboy hat. Black curtains leave the room in almost total darkness and even though Billy cringes slightly in anticipation of the animal smells he expects to come from Pete’s room, none are forthcoming. In fact, the room seems oddly odourless.

  “Ready?” says Billy.

  “Of course, how are you feeling?” answers Pete.

  “Good.”

  “How many miles this morning?”

  “Four and a half, including hill sprints.”

  “Hmmm, we might want to ease off on the running over the next few weeks and shift the emphasis to Tabata workouts and 10 by 10 drills. Shame we can’t get some shark tanking into the regime, but I’ll think of something to fill the gap. Where’s your sauna suit?” Pete has picked up his bag and coat and is locking his room.

  “Oh c’mon Pete, I’ve had that thing on all morning.”

  “Well, no problem; if you were your own trainer, you wouldn’t have to wear it, would you?”

  “OK, look, the thing is dripping and it stinks. I’ll wear it next time.”

  “What are you, deaf? No problem, next time you wear it if you feel like it, because I’m not gonna be there to keep you in line.” Pete is turning to go back into his room.

  “I’m putting it on – two minutes.” Billy goes back to his room and takes the sauna suit from his wash basket. He takes off his comfortable fleece-lined tracksuit and puts on the cold, wet sauna suit. It smells. Pete is waiting outside his door.

  “OK. Listen Billy, this guy’s meant to be a really big bastard and he knows what he’s doing.”

  “Sure.”

  “No, I’m serious this time. He sparred with Bobby the Bento a fortnight ago and Bobby is still in hospital.”

  “Yeah well, Bobby’s slow,” says Billy. They head down the stairs.

  “Bobby is a good fighter, Billy. He’s strong as an ox. He’s fit too – I’ve seen him knocked down three times and still win a fight. And he ain’t all that slow. I’m telling you, he’d give you a good run for your money.”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” says Billy.

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

  “I should do – I fought him five years ago before you started managing my affairs.”

  “Is that right? And?”

  “He was slow.”

  “Well OK, look Billy, all I’m saying is this guy doesn’t hold anything back and he’s vicious. There’s something about him – his mechanism’s gone. He’s not a proper boxer. I’ve got a couple of contacts who know some good fighters, who might be willing to spar with you, so all I’m saying is let’s just stick to the training programme and wait till we get someone who you can properly spar with.” They get to the bike shed and Pete climbs aboard his ladies-style folding bicycle and they set off for the boxing club off Old Kent Road, with Billy running along beside him.

  “Pete, you know training hard is not going to get me match fit. I need someone who’s going to challenge me. This guy – what’s his name?”

  “Bernard, and you can always train harder, in fact you need to train harder,” says Pete.

  “Bernard – he sounds perfect. You know I respect your opinion and you’re in charge, so whatever you say goes, but I haven’t had a sparring partner for three months. Pete, if you feel like it’s getting out of hand, just call it.”

  “OK, I just don’t want to see you end up like Bento.”

  “What’d he do to him?”

  “Four broken ribs, a punctured lung, fractured and dislocated jaw. Get those legs up, Billy.”

  They get to the club, Billy gratefully changes out of the dripping sauna suit and, once Pete has strapped up his hands and got the gloves and head protection on, they head to the main ring. As Billy starts his warm-ups, a blood-curdling howl echoes out of the changing rooms. Billy has long ago learned to filter out any kind of external influences when he’s building himself up to fight; it’s one reason why he’s been so successful at the sport up until now. That, and the fact that he’s good at reading his opponents, is built like a brick shit house and has incredibly fast hands. But there is something inhuman about the noise that gets through to his head. There are two voices in the changing room now, both shouting in a language he doesn’t understand – Russian, maybe. One is obviously trying to calm the other down, the other sounds like he’s just been told his family has been slaughtered or is having his foot removed without anaesthetic. The sound is monstrous. Insane.

  Billy suddenly imagines that there are a wide variety of things that he should be doing with his life and this isn’t one of them.

  As suddenly as it started, the pandemonium stops. At the end of the long corridor, where the hollering has been coming from, is a glass brick wall. A door opens on the right-hand side of the corridor and a figure steps out and begins to walk towards them, presenting a short and slender, dark outline against the day-lit brickwork. The figure is wearing a head guard and gloves. Billy breathes a deep sigh of relief. The figure nears the end of the corridor and then opens a door in the left-hand side of the corridor and disappears. At the same time, another figure steps out at the far end of the corridor again and blocks out most of the light. Holy fucking shit!

  Billy looks at Pete. Pete is staring wide-eyed down the corridor.

  “Pete. Pete.” Pete finally turns his attention back to Billy and says:

  “I’ll go get you a sledgehammer.”

  Billy turns back round. Bernard has reached the end of the corridor and is walking slowly and deliberately into the gym, staring at Billy all the while, whilst his trainer emerges from behind him, a relatively tiny Chinese man in a dirty brown suit, fitting onto Bernard’s side like a remora on a shark. Bernard has no protective headgear on. He steps into the ring, walks directly up to Billy and swings at his head. Billy is caught by considerable surprise, but manages to duck awkwardly out of the way of the blow and back steps clumsily out of reach of the next swipe coming his way.

  Billy recovers from the surprise attack quickly and begins bouncing on the balls of his feet, moving quick and seeing the swings early. He can hear Pete and the Chinese guy shouting at each other but he filters it out, focusing on the enormous man who seems very difficult to evade in a ring that he seems to half fill.

  “Quiet bell they’re using today,” says Billy jovially as he bounces away from another huge gloved right hand. Then he cuts in fast, his left catching Bernard’s right eye socket and his right coming over and hammering him square on his left temple, before pulling back and then – what the fuck! He’s scrambling off the floor, his head is ringing, he turns and Bernard is there with another right fist, this time into his chest. He feels a rib break with certainty as he falls backwards towards the ropes. Fuck, don’t let him get you on the ropes, his head screams. He runs out the way, not bouncing, but literally running like a child dodging in a game of tic.

  He has never been hit so hard in his life.

  Billy is bouncing again. He keeps the monster at arm’s length. He takes no risks now, keeping out of the corners,
watching the man called Bernard. The man’s eyes seem vacant. He cannot see anything behind them. All boxers keep their cards close to their chest, and he’s an expert at spotting the human hiding behind the wall and exploiting what he finds, but there’s no human here; just wall. He keeps taking cheap shots, moving from side to side and jabbing where he can, but he’s desperate, because there are no patterns to follow or break. Sometimes Bernard seems clumsy and Billy is able to get in some big shots, but the next moment he’s right there again, breathing down his neck and seemingly only angered by Billy’s punches.

  Considering the fact that there was no bell to start with, Billy doubts the likelihood that they’ll be adhering to the usual boxing practices of rounds, bells and ceasing to box when one’s opponent is unconscious. Billy is tiring and his broken rib is affecting his breathing. He’s been chased around for over five minutes now, but Bernard doesn’t appear to be short of breath in the least. The man is like a character out of Street Fighter or something, with unlimited stamina that just keeps reaching and swinging as long as you can be bothered to wiggle the joystick. Billy realises that he needs to try and incapacitate the man or he’s going to be in for some serious physical damage. Billy waits for an opportunity again; it’s easy enough to step inside and deliver the goods, not so easy to get back out in one piece if the bombs don’t have the desired effect.

  Bernard overextends himself slightly, swinging a huge haymaker with his right, growling angrily as he misses. Billy steps around to the side of Bernard and batters him quickly with three extremely hard left punches to the man’s unprotected head and then swings the right upper cut beneath his still flailing right arm and catches him full cock square on the chin. Bernard doesn’t fall over. Bernard turns his head and smiles at Billy, who realises too late that he’s worked himself into the corner to make his move.

  Everything seems to slow down for Billy. He watches as Bernard turns smoothly, his left swinging through and thumping up under his protective elbows and bouldering into his abdomen, ramming up into his diaphragm. The right is following up and he moves his glove and head to try and minimise the damage, but he’s reacting too slowly now, still reeling from the last blow, and the huge arm batters his glove out of the way and sends his head spinning on his neck like a speedball. He has a moment to wonder what happened to Pete and the Chinese guy and anyone else in the fucking building, before the bombardment commences. He tries to keep his arms up and protect himself; tries to stay on his feet as he doesn’t believe there’ll be any mercy on the floor. He keeps spinning and staggering along, clinging to the ropes, and suddenly he can see the cow in Apocalypse Now, machetes slicing slabs out of its neck and back as it drops to its knees, and now the huge whelk-encrusted whale comes emerging from the green gloom underneath the pack ice and he can hear crying. He must be crying. But it’s not him crying and suddenly the blows are erratic and he sees through his swollen, battered face that Bernard is sobbing like a baby, swinging randomly as if he’s fending off an unseen enemy and then, suddenly, with a clang, he drops to his knees and falls flat on his face. Through his puffy eyes, Billy can see a blurry man wearing a cowboy hat standing where the huge blubbering figure of Bernard had been moments before, with what appears to be a fire extinguisher in his hands.

  “What took you so long?” dribbles Billy through his bleeding split lips.

  “Couldn’t find a sledgehammer,” says Pete, helping Billy to his feet.

  “I feel like a Bento box.”

  “I told you, you need to train harder.” He holds the ropes open for Billy, who steps through gingerly. The small Chinese man is lying unconscious on his back, next to the ring.

  “Woah, and the winner by two knockouts…” says Billy, laughing and grimacing at the same time.

  “Ah, he was being unhelpful.”

  “Remind me to be more helpful to you in the future.” Pete helps Billy back to the changing room. They both look at the sauna suit hanging on his peg. A moment passes.

  “I’d best get that back on then,” says Billy.

  “I think we can make an exception this one time.”

  “No, no, I should put it on; like you said, I need to train harder.”

  “Well no problem Billy, if you want to be your own trainer, you can wear that thing all day if you want. Hell, sleep in it if you like.”

  “I’m just trying to be helpful here, Pete. I don’t want you to think I’m being unhelpful. I should put it on.”

  “What are you, deaf? Give it to me.” Pete takes the sauna suit and puts it under one arm, then, with Billy draped over his other shoulder, they walk out of the gym.

  Smutter

  Frank and Gunderson follow me into the gym. Teenth is already there with a couple of heavyweights – I’m guessing they were tight outside, because none of them bother to check the other’s composure. None of ‘em moves a muscle. I’m pleased to find that my heart doesn’t skip a beat – it never has in these situations, but then I’m old and people change.

  I’ve told Frank and Gunderson that we’re here just to talk, but they’re both old enough and ugly enough to know that a man like Teenth isn’t the talking type and they’ve both made sure to put their affairs in order – as much as that’s possible to do from the inside – before they came. There’s only two ways for this to end: Teenth goes down or Frank does. You may be able to tell from the fact that I’m stood at Frank’s end of the pitch that I’m not a fan of the latter being the final result.

  Teenth’s been in two weeks and he wants to be a big fish. Now there’s all manner of ways of proving yourself to be a big fish (one being to take out another big fish, which is how I did it), but not in all my forty-four years in prison has one of them been to watch a man knock your tray of dinner all over you and let it go unpunished. Wiping off the sauce and saying, “That’s OK, I don’t think bolognaise stains,” is not really the big fish way. But, to be sure, my man Frank can be a clumsy one. Teenth had grabbed Frank rough round the neck and shaken his glasses off, but no real damage was done before the screws intervened. Teenth still requires satisfaction.

  I size up Teenth; he must be in his fifties, but he’s in very good shape. He clearly spends plenty of time in rooms like this, but he doesn’t have a bodybuilder’s physique – his muscular arrangement has been cultivated for more practical application. He looks like a cage fighter. From the angle of his wrist, I can see he’s tooled up as well, which is impressive – it’s damned hard to get yourself a weapon in Belmarsh, and he’s been here only two weeks. The man must be resourceful, I’ll give him that. Well, all the better I suppose.

  I must admit that considering what’s about to happen, I am feeling in particularly fine spirits, stood here in my smutter with my two greatest friends at my side, at the end of what has to be the best twenty-four hours I have had since they locked me up. The lads were feeling pretty tense yesterday afternoon, after I sent word to Teenth that we should meet tomorrow in the gym at 3pm to iron out the problem, but then we all got visitors: Frank’s daughter Chloe came to see him and give him the family news; Gunderson’s partner (as in business) had visited to update him on his company’s growth (Gunderson was an architect on the outside, believe it or not); and I had my first visitor in over twenty years.

  I don’t know how she managed to get a visit with me with such short notice and I don’t much care. What I care about is that she showed me the truth, and I cried like a baby when I heard it after all these years of darkness. They say the truth will set you free, and in my case this may literally be the case.

  We reconvened later in the library. Apart from the staff and Le Tran, the medical orderly, who is reading Vietnamese books, it’s just us in there. Ben, the library assistant, has managed to get hold of a copy of Roger’s Profanisaurus for us, and while the boys quietly read out various crudities and their definitions, I allow myself to think of the outside for just a little while.

  I imagine what it would be like to lie in a park and look up at the trees,
with no screws to tell you your time’s up, but then I think that maybe I’d feel lonely, laid out there on the grass on my own. I think about how it would feel to lean on a bar and drink a skinful, but then I think alcohol might make me sick after all this time, and then I imagine someone might recognise me, even now, and suddenly I’d be running down the street, getting chased by an angry mob. I consider how it would be to try and track down Jed’s family – I’m sure my brother had children before he died, but they might be in Canada or New Zealand and, even if I did find them, would they be happy to see their child-murdering uncle? I think about how it would feel to have a woman in my arms, but I think I have even lost the taste for that.

  I am sixty-three years old. I have no-one on the outside. Freedom is a terrifying thought: the horror of a silent, private bedroom; the desperation of sitting on a bus just to be near people; the emptiness of being woken up alone in a cinema, the film over.

  I look around me. This is my family, this is my home. I have been here since 1991, when they opened Belmarsh, after twenty years in Scrubs. I have protected the weak, I have guided the curious and I have punished the cruel. I am respected here, by the inmates, the staff, even by the screws. I am known, I am understood.

  I cannot leave now. I will not leave now. Teenth will be my ticket to stay.

  That night when Gunderson climbed down to my bunk, I told him I wasn’t in the mood, but he stayed anyway and we held each other. He traced his fingers over the imperial eagle tattooed on my chest and finally went to sleep. I stayed awake, listening to the sounds of the night: men breathing, snoring and crying out in their sleep; radiators rattling and pinging; the distant echoes of the screws chatting, making tea and watching TV; and every once in a while, the sound of birdsong somewhere on the outside. Tiny thudding little souls that will not even be held by daylight. I drifted off as grey dawn filled the gaps between the bars of my window.

  We are early. I need to buy some time. I nod to Frank and Gunderson, indicating for them to stay put, and take a few steps towards Teenth. He does the same, without bothering to look at his deputies. I begin to mutter under my breath.