Andrew Grant: Even

Without consciously intending to, my hand moved up to touch the back of my head. It was still sore. Two nights ago someone I was working with made a mistake. It was their miscalculation, but I was the one to pay the price. A piece of flying glass had cut me. A big piece. It had sliced my skin, right through to the bone. So I had to admit, annoying as the situation was, things could have been a lot worse. It wasn’t as if I’d never been locked up before. It comes with the territory. As cells go, this one wasn’t too bad. It was a bit small maybe, and pretty spartan, but relatively clean. And I was in there on my own. There’s nothing worse than being crammed in with a horde of unwashed lowlifes, spewing out their foul breath and trampling on your feet. Plus, I wouldn’t be in there long. Not like the hopeless cases you normally find in these places. Sad, desperate people clinging to the fruitless fantasy they weren’t going to spend the rest of their lives in jail. For me, clearly, it was only a temporary problem. A bump in the road. Nothing more.

Because in a few hours, I’d be on a plane back to London.

I first moved house when I was still in kindergarten.

It was because of my dad’s job. He worked for the government and for some reason they found it essential to transplant us from Birmingham to London. One large English city to another. On the face of it, not too big a change. But for a six-year-old, different worlds.

Looking back, violence was inevitable. I had a different accent. A different vocabulary. I was used to different rituals and routines. And it was the 1970s, after all. With hindsight, what happened the first time I set foot in the playground wasn’t a huge surprise. For a moment I stood on my own, looking around, getting my bearings. Then I noticed a group of kids coming toward me. I counted about twenty. All boys. At first I was pleased, thinking they wanted to play or to make friends. Two of them came right up close. The rest gathered around. They formed a tight circle. And started to chant.

Fight, fight, fight.

I’d never encountered a situation like that before. My old school had been happy and peaceful. I had no experience to base my response on. Only instinct. And it was telling me the danger had to be snuffed out fast, before things got out of control. I focused on the two boys in front of me. They were the biggest. Clearly a year or two older than the rest. One was a little taller than the other. And a little broader. That made him more of a threat, so I decided he had to go down first.

I was surprised, but one punch was all it took. It left him rolling on the ground, a mess of blood and snot and tears. Then I turned to his pal. Only I couldn’t hit him. He’d already run away, along with the rest of their little gang. And after that, until the day I left, they never came near me again.

It wasn’t a very good school. That was the only lesson I learned, the whole time I was there.

But I can’t complain. It’s served me well over the years.

I woke to the sound of footsteps on the far side of the gate. They were approaching the lobby. I could hear three sets. Two were confident and purposeful. The other was shuffling and reluctant. They drew closer, then stopped. I heard voices. One was Officer Jackman, starting the property-bagging ritual. The others were unfamiliar. I guessed it was around 2:30 A.M., Monday morning. I’d most likely been asleep on the bench for less than two hours.

Two of the cells only had a single occupant. Mine, and the one nearest the gate. If the guy in that one was as stoned as he looked, I knew they wouldn’t risk putting anyone in with him. Which meant I was about to get a new cellmate. I sighed to myself and leaned across to get a better view down the corridor.

Jackman was the first to appear. Behind him, two more uniformed officers were struggling with a prisoner. He was quite tall-about six feet two, only a couple of inches shorter than me-but incredibly wide. Everything about him seemed distorted. His legs, his arms, his chest, his neck-they all looked stretched sideways, like a regular TV picture on a wide-screen set. He was wearing tight, dark blue jeans with white patches bleached into them, army-style boots with the leather stripped away to expose the steel toe caps, and a faded burgundy sleeveless sweat top. His head was completely shaved. He had a flat, square face apart from his nose, which was crooked from being broken too often. But the most eye-catching thing about him was the tattoo on his neck. It was a line of swastikas. They were scarlet, outlined in black, and drawn so that the hooks at the end of each arm were joined together in an unbroken ring.

Jackman opened the door and the two officers heaved the Nazi into my cell. They really put some effort into it, but he still came to a halt after one step. Jackman followed, but didn’t try to push him any further. The officers stayed close and drew their nightsticks. They looked tense. Their eyes didn’t leave the big guy’s back. One of them had grazed knuckles on his right hand. The other had red patches on his forehead and a cut about an inch long to the side of his left eye. Maybe they were afraid the Nazi might kick off again. Or maybe they were hoping he would.

Jackman began to gingerly remove the Nazi’s handcuffs. They were stretched to their widest setting to fit around his huge wrists. There was no “keep looking at the wall” speech this time, but the Nazi put his hands on his head anyway, without being told. I guess he was no stranger to the routine, and he wasn’t stupid enough to give the officers behind him any excuse to go to work with their nightsticks.

The Nazi remained completely still until the officers had locked up and pulled back to the lobby. Then he glanced over his shoulder to make sure I was watching, and stretched his arms up high over his head. The stench of stale sweat grew stronger. With his arms still extended, he unlaced his fingers and showed me that the way he’d been holding them, it was as if he’d been giving a V sign to the officers behind him. He half turned toward me, and the solid slabs of his cheeks folded into a huge smile. He began to chuckle, and finally broke into a braying laugh.

I kept my expression as neutral as possible and looked away, keeping track of him out of the corner of my eye. His laughter slowly trailed off and an embarrassed, sulky frown spread across his face. Then, slowly and deliberately, he turned to fully face me.

“The hell are you?” he said, as if seeing me for the first time.

“No one for you to worry about,” I said.

“The hell you doing in my cell?”

“But that could change…”

“The hell you doing on my bench?”

“Oh-this is your bench?”

“Yeah. And I want to sit down, asshole.”

“Sit on the other bench.”

“No.”

“Then stay standing up.”

“I want to sit on my bench. Now.”

“What makes it your bench?”

“I’m telling you it is.”

“It’s your property?”

“Yeah.”

“You own it?”

“Right.”

“So what happened? Did you buy it?”

“What?”

“The police department sell it to you?”

“Eh?”

“Your mummy write your name on it, so you wouldn’t lose it in the playground?”

“The hell?”

“Or did the guards name it after you? ‘The Imbecile Nazi Memorial Bench?’ In memory of your brain? Assuming you once had one.”

He took a moment before trying to answer this time, and I watched as his giant fists balled up by his sides.

“Last chance,” he said, stressing each word individually. “Off the bench. Right now.”

“What’s your name?” I said.

“What?”

“Simple question. What’s your name?”