David Mathew - O My Days

Happy Birthday, darling, I say to Patrice.

I haven’t shaved; I haven’t even deodorised properly. It’s my little girl’s special day and it’s slipped my mind. What sort of father am I?

You could have brought a card, Billy, says Julie.

And you might have noticed that I don’t have a free range, I answer sarcastically, of the ordinary person’s shopping facilities.

Fine. You made one on the computer last year.

Not allowed anymore, I lie, innit.

Well, why not?

Some yoot send out coded escape messages.

This part is true. The problem was discovered when someone came to comprehend that at the age of nineteen it’s unlikely that one boy can have seventeen daughters.

Patrice is taking turns between gurgling and sulking. The Visits Room is packed—because it’s the weekend. More people have time to exercise their guilty consciences at the weekend. Julie has returned from the tuck shop with the most chocolate that I’m allowed to receive: five bars. I have never once mentioned that I hate the stuff.

I need a favour, I tell her. I need some books sent in.

Julie frowns. You work in a Library, Billy; just order them, she says.

They won’t let me have ’em.

Then they’ll never get past Reception.

Just listen. Are you listening?

Julie huffs. I’m not a fucking gangster, Billy. Don’t do that line with me.

Ignoring her, I add: The people in Reception are dicks. Don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. Call it a distance learning gig. Call it anything you want. I’m asking you for a favour, not a kidney. It’s just a couple of books.

I turn to the nearest screw. Don’t know his name.

Gov! Permission to kiss my girlfriend, sir.

Granted.

Hadn’t you better ask permission from me, too? Julie asks as I lean across the table.

Our lips meet and open wide; I use my tongue to push into Julie’s mouth the wish-list I have written, inside the saliva-proof prophylactic of a folded-over piece of paracetamol casing. As usual, Julie hides it on the left side of her mouth, near the back, where a molar is compacted and there’s a bit of space.

You could say something like: that was nice, Julie. I miss you, Julie. I’m kissing you because I want to, Julie, as well as I have to. Anything would do. I’m easily pleased, Billy.

Sorry. I’m distracted.

So I see. And by the way, how exactly am I supposed to pay for these books? They’s expensive, you know, Julie wises me.

I know, I know. Am I chatting shit with you, woman? Getting vex now.

Speak English, Billy, Julie says wearily. She picks up Patrice and gently settles our little girl onto her lap; the girl squirms. That movement makes me winsome.

I calm down. Take the money out of my account, I tell Julie slowly—releasing a clot of invisible steam through my teeth.

Can’t innit, I’m told. She averts her eyes.

Why not? Why not, Julie?

All gone, Julie answers.

Excuse me? I can eventually say.

Once upon a time, boys and girls, I was doused in petrol. The assailant ignited matches, one after the other, until I agreed that he had permission to take my wallet. Just take it! I screamed as the next match got closer. You feel chilled to the bone. It’s how I feel at this precise moment.

Julie. I left eighty-five-fucking-grand in my current account, I say. What are you chatting me, it’s all gone? Before I get angry. Angrier.

I’ve been meaning to tell you, Billy.

Tell me now.

It was Bailey. She sounds relieved to be made to tell the tale. To make it past tense. She won’t look at me—she looks at the top of Patrice’s head—but there is light in her voice; there is light on her brow. He stole your card details. This she says almost proudly. Said he’d invest it wisely.

I can’t help myself. Eighty-five grand’s worth of details! I scream.

I stand up; the chair behind me is bolted to the floor and won’t move. Suddenly the thought of requiring Ostrich to further my ambitions seems dumb: I have all the inspiration that I need right here. The violent motion of spanking Julie across the face makes me fall to the side. I have lost my balance. Wanting to hit her again, I am instead hit. And not once. Without knowing what I’m doing, I have moved a step closer to Dott.

It’s a few days earlier that I stumble upon the idea of the books. I am chatting breeze with Carewith—he of the rationed intelligence—because breeze is all you can talk with the brere. Most of the time you can’t even chat shit with the brother: chatting shit at least contains a nugget of sense or wisdom on occasion. But Carewith’s engine has long since run out of petrol: too much skunk, on road, too many cocktails of medicinal alcohol and cider. So we’re chatting breeze: worthless air. Something about weekend breakfasts. When Carewith moves his lip and suddenly releases, not breeze, not shit, but reality. All of a sudden man chats me point blank: it hits me between the eyes.

I was having a chat with that screw from the Cookery Class, he says.

Why? I interrupt him immediately.

He shrugs. Something to do innit. Wanted to hear his side of the story.

His side, I tell Carewith, is pure bullshit. They’re denying all knowledge of it. And blood, they ain’t fucking around with any teasing still.

I heard. Dusty Palestinian yoot, Carewith says, confirming the rumour. Said yoot bust a chuckle with said screw in good humour; said screw bust a knuckle on said yoot’s left femur. Yoot went down. The message? No jokes. The subject is serious.

Turns out we’re from the same ends, Carewith tells me.

It’s breeze. But sometimes a breeze contains dirt.

Big deal, I say.

Them’s bad boy ends, blood.

So?

So how does a man from our ends end up as a fucking screw of all things? Most mans’ ambition from our ends is not getting blazed with a nine-fucking-millimetre, cuz.

It’s no more than a mild coincidence, but what Carewith says next makes the skin on the top of my head chill and tingle; it’s as though I’ve torn the caul and been reborn once again.

Be it heard, cuz. The same ends as Meaney, as it happens.

The remark is throwaway; the irony is that Carewith accepts it as breeze but it’s this simple statement that puts the rat among the pigs.

I don’t know what root in the forest I’ve stumbled upon but I understand instinctively—or so I think—that it’s the root to a very big, gnarly old oak.

Roller’s from the south coast, I argue.

As the ignorant do when they are adamant about a fact, Carewith contends the point passionately: his brief argument back to me is almost hostile, in fact.

Grew up on the south coast. Spent five years in my ends.

Crime has neighbourhoods. It’s not the other way around. Crime is the landlord and a neighbourhood pays crime’s taxes and monthly protection. Crime replaces the lightbulbs in the streetlamps—but first crime smashes them out. Crime paints the fences a uniform council colour—but first crime slashes the metal with thickly penned graffiti. Crime closes down libraries. It was crime that chose me. I didn’t choose crime. Because I lived in crime’s neighbourhood; I lived in crime’s ends. The same ends as Roller.

When Association Time ends I am delighted and frightened to be returned to my pad. I wait for the stereos to start competing for decibelage and then I know that I am as safe from interruption for the night as it’s possible to be. The line of thought I follow is like a whip, like a heart line.

It can’t be a coincidence, can it? I’m starting to sweat.

I’ve heard in the past—much as I dislike referring to the past—about such phenomena as mass hysteria and mass misdirection. And I think, there at my table, with my hair gels and unnecessarily stockpiled toothpastes (the market’s dead for toiletries) that these phenomena are what we’re visiting. He’s planted something, has Dott; I simply don’t know what yet. Or why. And there are other concerns pertaining. History says it all. You can convince an entire nation to believe in a murderous campaign: that’s a fact. It’s been proven. You can ask a lifeline to believe that it’s okay to delve for riches through the vaults of the under-valued. Not one motherfucker will raise an eyebrow, and you know it. How do you persuade the innocent that left is right? By mass hypnosis, I reckon; by mass hysteria, mass compulsion. Irrespective of my feelings about having been manipulated, I am certain that there was something in the air that we responded to and applauded.