by Ted Lewis
He raised his eyes to the ceiling.
“All right, I’ll give you the number and you can phone back. But make it quick before they tumble, otherwise you’ll miss all the juice.”
Walter put the phone down.
“That cunt’s about as trusting as my lawyer.”
“When he rings back tell him Billy Cracken sends his best,” I said.
The pandemonium was getting worse. Some of them were so excited that I thought maybe they were going to start rolling about the floor in ecstasy. Every so often there’d be a scream from the passageway and a load of cons would rush out to repel boarders but it would always be a false alarm and they’d shuffle back in and take it out on what was left of the furniture.
Then Moffatt came on the scene.
Everybody except Walter, who was talking to his reporter, crammed outside to the barricades and began to volley him off.
“You cunt, Moffatt, you heap of shit, you fucking egg, you wanking mother-fucker.”
It was like the Anfield Kop. Everybody screaming all at once, all the animal hatred and frustration focused on Moffatt who was standing out there like a referee putting down the names in his little notebook. But the roar of abuse didn’t stop and even Moffatt couldn’t take it for very long. He had as much chance of negotiating a settlement as the public hangman. So he stopped trying to promote his stock and retired. Some of the cons stayed at the barricade after Moffatt had gone. I led the others back into the office. Walter was still on the phone.
“For Christ’s sake,” he screamed at us as we all bundled back in. There was quiet for a moment or two but the hysteria was too great for the racket to be kept down for very long. Walter gave up and I took over the phone and gave the reporter a few facts and then Walter had a word with him. We soon got bored with this so we swallowed the reporter and Walter phoned up his bird, Chloe Raines, the pop singer.
Then everybody began to queue up for the phone so that they could ring up their birds or their old ladies or anybody else they could think of. I felt a bit out of it because I couldn’t ring Sheila as her Mum wasn’t on the phone then and I couldn’t remember anybody else’s number. Then “Don’t Stop the Carnival” came on over the radio and somebody turned the volume up full blast and everybody began to dance and laugh and shriek and join in with the song. Walter stood by the telephone, clapping his hands in time to the music and jigging up and down, his eyes flicking from con to con, looking like a benevolent gargoyle watching the antics of a group of animated garden gnomes. One of the cons was screaming down the telephone.
“Well fucking well go and find her,” he shouted. “And don’t come back without her.”
The scene depressed me. There they all were, dancing like cakewalkers, as if they were pissed, as if they were free, as if they’d really done something great. And it was nothing: they wouldn’t even be doing this if it hadn’t been for me. And there was Walter on the other side of the room, clapping them along, the benevolent dictator, joining in like the boss at the firm’s office party, determined to prove he was one of the boys. I watched him through the swirling bodies. He made me sick. He thought he was number one. But to be number one you had to stand alone. And that was something Walter could never do. He couldn’t be content with being top of the pyramid. The rest of the pyramid had to be made up of Walter-lovers. And he couldn’t see how they were only Walter-lovers because he wanted them to be. If he’d wanted them to be the other way, they’d have been the other way. It wasn’t as if they were all frightened to death of him. Some were, but they were frightened of their mothers’ shadows as well. The others were kissing Walter’s arse for what they could get out of him, inside and out. They knew Walter liked appearing large, so if they stuck their tongues right up his crevice then they could rely on him to keep them and their families in the jam. The cons who couldn’t give two fucks for Walter could be picked up one handed. But my advantage was that I was the only con in the nick with the strength to pick them up. And the other greasers were more frightened of me than they were of Walter: I had nothing to give them but my clenched fist, and in the short run, that was more persuasive than Walter’s stocks and shares. So when the time came for me and the handful to go over the wall, the only con in the nick without a clue would be Walter. Moffatt would know before he did. Poor old fucker. But it was his own fault. It was evident that Walter’s plans only included Walter. The benevolence stopped at the wall. The only pity as far as I was concerned was that I wouldn’t be around to see the expression on Walter’s face.
But that was in the future. This little diversion had to run its course before I could get on to that one.
Walter caught me looking at him. He stopped clapping and gave me a look that said both you know and I know that really they’re all behaving like a bunch of cunts but what can you do, people like us, we’ve got to go along with the rubbish, makes them feel important when people like us get stuck in with them.
I smiled. Walter was even using his technique on me. He wanted me on his team. That would give him even more credibility with the rest of them. As well as it being easier for him to keep an eye on me. But that was the difference between Walter and me. I didn’t need a team. I didn’t need to be on a team. There was no reason. I could get along on my own.
Walter began to move across the room. Then the lights went out and the radio went off and the room went dead quiet except for the con who’d been using the phone. His aggrieved voice cut through the blackness.
“I’ve been cut off,” he said. “The sods have cut me off.”
Frobisher House. A youth club in Canning Town. Inter-club boxing, ours against Mill Road Club. Both clubs are well supported and the rivalry is sharp and rowdy. The full sound carries through into the dressing-room and pumps the adrenalin round my body. I know I’m going to win my bout. There’s no way I can lose. I feel too good. As I walk down the aisle all my mates give me the big cheer. This is what it’s all about. Knowing you’re going to fulfil what everybody expects of you. Expressing publicly what you’re capable of doing.
I’m down against a good boy called Barry Croft. He’s a slow mover but slow to anger as well, composed, unwilling to let my aggravations draw him into danger. So I have to wait for my moment, filling in the first round by snapping in as many lefts as I can get through his guard.
The bell goes and I sit down in my corner and give the wink to my mates in the front row. Then a stillness in one of the characters in the crowd catches my eye. I have to look twice to make sure. I can’t believe it. My father. His eyes are shining in a way I’ve never seen before. Full of pride and admiration. I just can’t believe it. How did he even know I was boxing?
The bell goes again and I throw myself into the fight. I’ve never boxed so well before, relaxed, even more convinced of the final outcome. I try and get the decision inside the time but that doesn’t work out. Croft just closes up and walks away from the rest of the fight. But the decision is mine and after the fight I look for my father but he is no longer in the crowd. Perhaps he’s gone to the dressing-room to wait, so we can walk home together and talk about the fight. But there is no sign of him. Outside. That’s where he’ll be. He’d rather wait outside in the rain than have to hang about talking to people.
I hurry to get changed but as I’m changing a mate of mine sticks his head round the door and says: “Your old man told me to tell you he’s had to go on somewhere and you’re to go on home with your mates.”
I sit down on the bench. Why couldn’t he have waited? Why couldn’t he have let me walk with him, even just as far as the pub?
When I get home I wait up for him. He comes in stiff and goes straight to bed. He doesn’t even nod at me as he comes through the door. Just straight through into the bedroom without saying a word.
Later, as I lie in bed, I can hear the dry sound of his snoring from their bedroom. The sound goes on and on and
I want to get out of bed and smash my fists into his stupid open mouth again and again so that the rattling sound might stop for good.
The candles flickered.
I was sitting on the floor with my back to the wall, my file open on my legs in front of me. Most of the other cons were sitting the same way, leafing through their files, calling out the choice bits.
The screws seemed to have packed it up for the night, but we’d worked a rotation to keep the barricades covered. The reason the lights had gone out was because the slag of a reporter had phoned through to the Governor after he’d got what he wanted out of us and told Moffatt about the phone calls. That way his paper got two stories.
I looked at my file. It was about the size of the New Statesman and about a foot thick. It must have weighed ten pounds. It made a lot of confetti when I eventually tore it up. Which is about all it was worth. It was incredible. Nearly everything in it was speculative and unsuppor-ted by facts. I expected to learn something about myself, some analytical insight that might shed some light on my motives, but all I discovered was what the great British public already knew via the newspapers. I was just another thug. A bit more spectacular than most, but just a thug. It made me sick. These people had put me in the same cell in different prisons for a total of almost ten years and they were the experts and this was their testament. Just another thug.
But the worst part in the file concerned the padre. I was registered as an atheist, but one day he’d barged into my cell full of assurances that he hadn’t come to try and convert me, just to see “if I was all right.” We’d had a chat for about a quarter of an hour but I’d hardly told him a thing, certainly nothing about my private life. But he’d got enough out of that quarter of an hour of conversation about prison generalities to knock up a nice neat little report confirming my irrevocable criminality; quite a juicy little tid-bit lying in the middle of my file, there for any nosy screw to browse through.
But I wasn’t the only one he’d put on file.
Ray Crompton said: “Here, would you fucking believe it? That bastard Tailby’s been going at me from behind his collar. It’s all down, what I told him about Maureen and me. About our business.”
“And me,” said Terry. “He’s made me out to be a right cunt.”
Tommy said: “He’s just been working as an assessor. It’s all down here about how in his opinion I’ll be back on the old tickle once I’m out and that the Governor should take this into account whenever I come up for review.”
“Christ, I’ll shit all over him when I see the fucker,” said Dave.
“Why wait?” said Terry.
“How do you mean?” said Ray.
“Well we need a karsi, don’t we? What’s wrong with his fucking chapel? It’s the next best thing to shitting over him.”
Tommy stood up.
“Funny you should say that,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to strain the greens.”
He got up and walked over to the door.
“Anyone for tennis?” he said.
Everybody cheered and those who could stir their bowels followed Tommy into the chapel and for the next five minutes the chapel echoed to the groans and farts and laughter of half a dozen cons. The rest of us in the office cheered each new noise and somebody remarked that it was a pity the wireless tannoy had been disconnected as we could have put one over the air and dedicated it to Moffatt.
While all this was going on, Walter’s cousin, Dennis Colman, who was sitting next to me reading Walter’s file, suddenly burst out laughing.
“What’s got in your trousers?” I said.
He kept on laughing.
“Come on,” said Walter. “Let’s all share the joke.”
Dennis wiped the tears from his face.
“Walter,” he said. “Have I got news for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Dennis handed the file to me.
“Oh, John,” he said, “you’ve got to read this about Walter. You know that screw he was always saying was a good’un? Well, he was slipped in. The screw was planted.”
Walter stared at him.
“Don’t look at me, Walter,” Dennis said. “It’s all down in the file. You’ve been screwed by a screw.”
He burst into laughter again. I began to read the bit he was on about. The screw that Walter had been cultivating, getting a sympathetic ear for the travails of his life, had been slipped in a couple of months before Walter had arrived in this nick. The screw had been given the brief of getting Walter’s confidence and reporting to Moffatt whatever he could find out. The assessment he’d made was encouraging: “Colman is self-centred . . . completely unrepentant . . . feels everybody is fair game to be used and has no qualms about using them . . . continually trying to establish a relationship with me and enlist my agreement with his running down of the staff . . .” And so on. I read all this out while Dennis fell about. Tommy and Ray and Terry had returned from the chapel and they augmented Dennis’s laughter but the rest of the cons didn’t know quite how to react. Walter couldn’t stand having the piss taken and he had a long memory. Except for Dennis and Tommy and Ray and Dave and Benny Beauty and me the cons were all watching Walter’s face to see which way he was going to bend.
It’s the only time I’ve seen Walter speechless. He was too astonished to be angry. He took the file from me and sat down near a candle and read through the screw’s report as if he was reading a foreign language, shaking his head as if he couldn’t make any sense out of the words.
I said: “I thought your screw was too good to be true, Walter.”
“So did I,” said Dennis. “I mean, how many times did I say just that, Walter?”
For once Walter was unconcerned about his image. He was talking to himself, as if he was on his own.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I just can’t credit it. Imagine it. All the time he was coming into my cell he was at it.”
“Never mind, Walter,” I said. “You can’t swallow everybody.”
Walter’s face went black. Then he picked up his file and flung it across the room.
“Cunt,” he said.
Whether it was me or the screw he was referring to wasn’t quite clear.
“Here, Billy,” said Ray, “let’s have a look at Hopper’s file.”
I got the file and passed it over to Ray. I’d been thinking about reading it myself but I’d put off opening it up for one reason or another.
Ray took the file and began to leaf through it. I lit up a cigarette and watched Walter as he stood by the window and looked out into the black night, not seeing the night at all, just seeing the face of his tame screw and no doubt imagining the designs he would work on it if he ever got the chance.
“Jesus,” Ray said, softly.
I turned to look at him. He let Hopper’s file sag gently across his knees.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
Ray shook his head.
“This,” he said, indicating the report.
“What about it?”
Ray carried on shaking his head.
“It’s just . . . I don’t know . . . I can’t.”
Tears appeared at the edges of his eyes. I took the file off his lap. It was open at Hopper’s deposition, his statement to the police.
“What’s that, Billy?” Tommy said.
“Hopper,” I said.
“Read it to us,” Tommy said, his voice quiet and serious.
“Well,” I said. “If you want.”
I began to read. I didn’t want to read it, let alone read it out loud, but it was as if somebody else was reading it, not me, somebody with a voice like a railway station loud-speaker, reading without emphasis or emotion, just droning on like a bored teacher on a hot summer afternoon. But even the voice that seemed
to be outside of myself had to stop when in the text it occurred that Hopper had sliced into one of the little girls with razor blades when she’d refused to go down on him, and all the time she’d been calling for her Mummy but her Mummy never came and it was five hours after Hopper had used the razor blades he’d finally killed her. And then he’d turned to the other little girl who’d had to watch everything.
I think I must have stopped in mid-sentence but nobody asked me to go on. I put the file down on the floor beside me. I didn’t have to look into any faces to know how everybody was feeling.
Just five minutes with him was all anybody wanted.
The picnic was never the same after that.
All I feel about him, looking at him, dead, in the coffin, is how like him yet unlike him he looks. The features are exactly the same as they were in life, the same distances, the same arrangement. But at the same time he looks like no one I’ve ever met before. A face passed in a crowd, unreal, making no contact. But that is all I feel. As I stand there I can hear my mother sobbing in the other room. The sound irritates me. Why doesn’t she stop? It’s just a useless, irritating noise, empty; the grief is for her lost life, not his. Later Linda comes to my bedroom. She stands by the bed, crying, asking to get in with me, but I pretend to be asleep, and eventually she goes away.
I awoke at quarter past six.
I sat up and the file paper I’d used to cover myself with slid off me and rattled coldly on to the floor. Grey morning light filtered through the barred windows. Ray was lying next to me and the smell of his feet drifted into my nostrils. I got up and went out of the office. I lit a cigar-ette and leant against the corridor wall. There was no sound out on the landing. Most of the screws would be in their pits, stoking up for the events of the coming day. We’d hardly heard from them at all during the night. The odd cowboy had thrown rocks up at the office window, but that had brought them no joy, except the pleasure of seeing our candle-lit faces squashed up against the glass.