Billy Rags

by Ted Lewis

  Walter was sitting in the chair next to me while Tommy was doing his stuff with the bundles. At one point he leant over to me and spoke to me as though the events of the previous day had never happened.

  “Billy,” he said, “have you fixed anything up for when you get out?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Because I was going to say,” he said, “I’ll see you all right for dough. I mean, if you like, you can come to South Africa with me.”

  “South Africa, Wally?” I said. “You’ve made some plans yourself, then.”

  Walter became all modest.

  “Well, you know, a few,” he said.

  “Yes I bet you fucking have, Walter. All I wonder is why you made the bastards. To fit this one or the one you’ve had cooking since before I came here?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you don’t,” I said.

  “Now, look . . .”

  I smiled at him.

  “Walter,” I said, “we both know you’ve had this up your sleeve for yonks. We both know how you got on to this firm. We both know you blackmailed your way in. So don’t let’s play make-believe and pretend we’re pals. Just let’s get on with the job in hand and hope that none of us get our balls broken in the process.”

  Walter shut up and I went back to watching the television.

  When Tommy had finished he handed us each some parcels. First one to go was Terry. He went down on to the ones and came back all smiles.

  “Went down a treat,” he said.

  After a while Tommy took his parcels up to the toilet on the Threes. When he came back it was clear that his had gone down as well as Terry’s.

  Then it was Walter’s turn. He chose the toilet next to the TV room. I could hear the toilet flush even with the box booming out. There was a second flush. A screw walked past the door in the direction of the recess. A third flush. Then I heard the screw say: “Been flooded out then, Wally?”

  Tommy and I looked at each other.

  “The cunt,” said Tommy.

  Tommy and I shot out on to the landing. The screw had carried on past the recess. Water was flowing out on to the landing, bits of grit and stone awash on the floor. Walter was standing there looking all sheepish. Ray and I kept our cleaning things in the recess so I grabbed some floor cloths and threw them down over the worst bits. Tommy checked that the screw wasn’t on his way back and then he got down on the floor with me and we tore into cleaning up the mess. Walter stood over us, hopping about like a pregnant kangaroo.

  “Christ,” he said, “that bleeding screw nearly had me.”

  “Nearly had you!” Tommy said, furious. “Nearly had the lot of us, you cunt. I must have told you six times to do them one at a time and you go straight out and do the opposite.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, Tommy,” he said. “I knew the screw was around and I thought that if I kept flushing the karsi then he might tumble something was wrong so I tried them all at once.”

  “You cunt,” I said, emptying the contents of the cloth down the toilet. “Why couldn’t you have fucking well waited?”

  “Well, I suppose I could have, but . . .”

  I stood up and grasped him by the collar.

  “Of course you fucking could have,” I said. “But you didn’t bleeding well want to, did you?”

  “Come off, Billy, what are you trying to make out?”

  I pushed him against the wall.

  “If you get us nicked, Wally, you’d better move upstairs with the monsters. Because if you don’t you’ll wish you never lived.”

  Tommy pulled me away from him.

  “Leave it, Billy,” he said. “If you’re not careful, you’ll get us nicked.”

  I backed off.

  “I don’t know what the bleeder’s talking about,” Walter said. “I just thought I was doing the right thing in the circumstances.”

  As opposed to the rubble, the bricks were a different problem altogether. We were soaking up a lot of our time getting them out of the hole to get at the bottom and putting them all back when we’d finished. So we racked our brains to think of a way of getting rid of them for good. But the prison authorities themselves gave us the answer; they were installing a new heating system, laying the pipes underground. And the ground where they were laying them was directly beneath our cell windows. There were piles of dirt and rubble out there. All we had to do was to wait until dark and throw our humble offerings out of the window and on to the tips. We couldn’t use the two-gallon container again because it would have meant the container lying about in one of our cells overnight. It had to be something that wouldn’t look out of place if the screws sniffed at it, something that could easily be explained away. So we came up with the idea of using Strachey’s tea can. Topping up the tea urn was one of the jobs Strachey had commandeered for himself. He kept the empty tea can handy to fetch the water from the tap to the urn. Strachey never used it in the evening because he always went behind his door after the children’s television programmes had finished. So at six o’clock I took the can up to the shower room and filled it up with some of the bricks and put the lid back on and got Ray to take it back down to the kitchen and leave it on the table for me to pick up later. The screws were used to cons carrying tea cans back and forth and it was safer to leave the can on the kitchen table than keep it with us in the shower room; no screw was going to lift the lid of a tea can in the hope of sniffing something.

  So when I’d finished my work in the shower I went downstairs to the kitchen to collect the can. But when I got in there Strachey was standing by the kitchen table. He was holding the lid of the tea can in his hand and looking at the bricks inside.

  I nearly macaronied on the spot.

  He must have sensed me standing there. He turned his great head towards me. There were tears in his eyes.

  “Billy,” he said to me, “someone put some bricks in my tea can. Now I can’t fill the urn.”

  I rushed over and took the lid off him and slammed it back on the can.

  “Don’t worry, Alan,” I said. “I’ll fill it up for you later. Now you go off to bed.”

  “But it’s got to be filled up,” he said. “I always fill it up every day at three o’clock. But the doctor sent for me today so I couldn’t do it.” More tears welled out of his eyes. “And now I haven’t got a can because somebody’s put bricks in it.”

  Fuck the poxy can, I thought. It only needed a screw to walk in now and hear what Strachey was saying.

  “Look, Alan,” I said, “go upstairs. I’ve told you I’ll fill the tea urn. And I’ll make sure there’s a can for you in future, I promise you. Now off you go.”

  “But who put the bricks in there?”

  “Never mind about that. Just do as you’re told.”

  He went but he didn’t like it. I went to my cell where Tommy was waiting for me.

  “Christ, what’s the matter with you?” he said when he saw me.

  I told him about Strachey. All Tommy did was to laugh.

  “Hell, don’t worry about Strachey,” he said. “He never talks to screws. Christ, I wondered what was up when I saw your face. I thought the world was coming to an end.”

  “Well, it isn’t funny, is it?”

  “It was just seeing your boat, that’s all.”

  When Tommy had finished enjoying himself he minded at my door while I stuffed the bricks out of the window on to the rubble and thought what one great fucking pantomime the whole thing was turning out to be.

  We cleared the dust and the really small rubble from the bottom of the hole by filling up plastic bags with water from the shower and emptying it down the hole.

  The breeze blew stronger after that.

  Tommy did a good nine-tenths of the diggin
g. He really slaved away at it. Walter and Gearing only helped with the little things that had to be done every time we went to work; minding, handling the bricks, giving Tommy the tools he wanted. The hole in front was now wide enough for Tommy to get his head and shoulders right inside so that he could dig two-handed. Soon he’d located the hole where the breeze was coming from. He could push a digger down it and not meet with any obstructions. Whether that meant it was a narrow duct or an opening into a space we couldn’t tell.

  The opening was to the left and about three foot down running at a forty-five degree angle. So that Tommy could work on it properly we had to remove a lot more of the inside bricks in the shaft which we didn’t mind doing because it just made it that little bit wider for when a man actually had to go down there.

  But Tommy working head and shoulders in like this had its disadvantages. Though we were still working the lookout system, it would have been impossible for Tommy to get out of the hole before whoever it was came through the door. This used to worry me and I wouldn’t let Tommy stay in there too long at a time. I didn’t like Wally or Gearing minding, either. They were too careless. So I did as much minding myself as I possibly could.

  Even so, one dinner time, it happened.

  It was the PO, the one I’d had on the night of the barricades. Kirk his name was.

  When I saw him coming I kicked the door to with my foot. I told Tommy to freeze and slammed the bench up against Tommy’s legs and the wall, and all the wall bricks stacked in twos beside it. I sat down on the bench, my back smothering the hole. All I had on was my shorts and I was sweating like a pig but it just looked as though I’d had a session with the weights.

  The door opened.

  “Tommy in here, Billy?” the PO said.

  I looked up as though I’d only become aware of him at the sound of his voice. Then I looked round the room, into the steam, as though I’d just been roused out of some personal preoccupation.

  “No,” I said, all disinterested. “No, he isn’t here, Mr. Kirk.”

  Kirk gave me a long look. He didn’t care for my answer, or the way I’d answered. Instead of going out again and yelling for Tommy on the landing, he walked into the steam and looked in all the shower stalls.

  I felt the whole thing was falling apart. All over. The whole fucking issue. Because when the PO turned back he was bound to see the hole. There was no alternative. Although my back had masked the hole from someone looking in from the doorway, the hole was visible when looking from the direction of the showers.

  I did the only thing I could do, the only thing that had even half a chance of keeping the PO from seeing the hole. I stood up and followed the PO into the steam, leaving Tommy’s back and the gaping hole. Tommy must have macaronied his strides seventeen times.

  As the PO turned to leave the shower, I was standing a few feet away from him, between the PO and Tommy and the hole. As the PO walked, I walked, keeping myself at a position relative to Tommy and the PO in so far that the PO couldn’t see anything even if he’d turned his head because I was close enough to him and positioned well enough to blot out his view. At the same time I kept talking, as if I knew that Tommy was somewhere he shouldn’t be elsewhere in the nick and as if I was playing for time.

  That made Kirk get a move on.

  It was absolutely farcical, the whole scene, me trotting alongside the PO, trying to gauge my position in relation to Tommy. But it worked. The PO reached the door without once even looking to his left. If he had have done and I’d been even slightly out of position, then that would have been it.

  The PO walked through the door and I followed him, carrying my towel. I closed the door behind us.

  Outside, Walter and Terry had been working at the weights. They must have thought the whole thing was blown sky-high.

  “Sir, is it all right if I weigh myself?” I said.

  The scales were in the PO’s room. The screw was supposed to accompany you in while you got on the scales to prevent you getting anything else besides. I knew Tommy would be out of the hole by now and I had to give him time to sneak out and come to light in the kitchen or the cell to the right of the shower room where the weight-lifting equipment was stored.

  The PO said I could weigh myself, so I walked into his office expecting him to follow. Walter and Terry were still frozen on the landing. The screw didn’t follow me. Instead he said to Walter and Terry: “Seen Dugdale anywhere?”

  They shook their heads. Kirk called up to the landings: “Twos, Threes.”

  A couple of screws peered over the landings.

  “Dugdale up there?”

  “No, sir.”

  Kirk stayed where he was, wondering where to look first.

  I panicked and went back into the shower. Tommy was standing in the middle of the room like a statue with nowhere to go.

  “Jesus,” he said. “What the fuck do I do now?”

  “You can’t sneak out, that’s for sure. If Kirk doesn’t see you, then the others will.”

  “Christ.”

  I was expecting the all away cry any minute.

  “Maybe if I tried to get Kirk away again,” I said.

  I wasn’t really talking to Tommy. My panic was giving a voice to my thoughts. I went outside and back into the office. Kirk was by the door, shouting to the other screw on the ones.

  “Dugdale, have you seen Dugdale?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Oh no,” Kirk said. “No.”

  He was in a right state, but not quite as bad as the one I was in. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was walking into the office to weigh myself and I’d just supposed to have done that. In any case Kirk hadn’t followed me in the first place so why should he follow me now?

  Instead he walked back to the shower room and went in.

  Walter and Terry hadn’t moved. I walked out of the office. They looked at me and I looked at them. This was it. We were nicked. It was all over.

  I walked past Walter and Terry and opened the door into the shower room.

  There was less steam than before. The hole was an eye-magnet. It must have hit the PO the minute he opened the door. But the PO wasn’t standing there looking at it.

  He was in the showers, third stall along.

  I walked over.

  Tommy was jammed up in the corner, a sick discovered look on his face. He was still wearing the overalls he wore to protect his body from the rough edges of the bricks. Standing under a running shower wearing overalls. If that wasn’t bad enough there were streaks of soot and dirt all over his face and his overalls.

  The PO was between Tommy and me, just standing there, looking at Tommy. For a moment, the urge to chop the PO filled my mind. It wouldn’t have done any good, we were finished anyway, but it seemed to be the only thing left for me to do.

  Then the PO said: “You bastard, Tommy. You bloody bastard.”

  Tommy stayed where he was, just staring at the PO.

  “You bastard,” the PO said again. “You trying to give me heart failure or something?”

  Something began to dawn in the back of my mind.

  “I should have realised,” the PO said. “After the last times.”

  The last times. I realised what the PO was saying. A couple of times Tommy had gone missing when there’d been a count. Just to give them a hard time. On each occasion, after turning the nick upside down, the screws had found Tommy sitting in his cell, all innocence, wondering what the bother was about. And now the PO thought the same thing had happened. That Tommy was having one of his games. The PO was so relieved he wasn’t even angry. The fact that Tommy was standing under the shower in his overalls didn’t seem to register with him.

  Tommy cottoned to what the PO meant.

  “Fooled you this time, Mr. Kirk,” he said, looking all roguish.


  “You bastard,” said Kirk.

  He turned away and walked past me.

  Now he would see the hole.

  But he didn’t. He just walked out of the shower room, shaking his head from side to side, rubbing his chin as if he was appreciating a very good joke.

  The door closed.

  Outside, Kirk called to the others.

  “It’s all right, he was hiding in the showers.”

  Tommy and I stared at each other.

  The door opened. Walter and Terry came in. Nobody spoke. The shower sizzled on.

  Eventually Tommy said: “Fucking Jesus.”

  There was another silence.

  “How the fuck did he miss it?” Walter said.

  I shook my head.

  “Tommy,” Terry said, “you’ve still got your overalls on.”

  Tommy looked down at himself.

  “Fucking hell,” he said. “I never thought.”

  “But he didn’t notice,” I said. “He was so fucking relieved to see you he didn’t notice.”

  “Jesus,” Tommy said.

  “Billy,” said Terry, “never mind Tommy. Have you seen yourself?”

  I looked at him.

  “I tried to warn you outside,” he said. “You’ve got all black down your neck and back.”

  I reached over my shoulder and rubbed my hand on my back. I was covered in soot from when I’d looked in the hole earlier on.

  “Christ,” I said.

  Tommy sat down on the bench.

  “I don’t know about anybody else,” he said, “but after that little miracle, we must get out. God’s on our side.”

  “For once,” I said.

  “He won’t be much longer if we don’t plug up that hole sharp,” Terry said.

  That jerked us back to reality. We got the tools and the spare bricks and plugged up the hole. Then we plastered it up with papier mâché and painted it.

  Then, one by one, we left the shower and went back to our cells.

  The hole never looked as bad to me as it did that day. It was a monster, eating into my nervous system. I kept having to drift back into the shower room to reassure myself that everything was all right. Every time I saw a screw coming towards me I was certain he was going to tell me that the hole had been discovered.