David Mathew - O My Days

What was his name?

It’s not often you hear laughter in the Visits Room. The job of the visitor is to shuffle and deal out some memories for the inmates; but most of them, well-intentioned or not, arrive carrying a card reading: This is what you ain’t got no more, Jack. Lick the plate clean because it’s all you’re getting.

My mother laughs with one of the good, rare ones. It’s genuine. And she adds to it: Billy. Have you any idea how many people have been there?

Like I’m some sort of prick.

A lot, I know. But I thought you might remember something like that.

Mumsy frowns. If you recall, young man, I was more worried at the time about your eyesight, and how you might need spectacles.

Spectacles?

The problem was, I couldn’t get good enough evidence of how you saw the whiteboard at school.

I was never there. I know, Mum, I’m sorry.

My point exactly, she adds—not without a shirtiness of her own, I might say. She knows the best way to make me feel worse about myself and my surroundings is to ignore an apology—especially one that’s been repeated to the n th degree.

Cooling my temper, I ask: Could it have been Ronald?

She waits for a second or two. It could have. Relieved by the appearance of a quiz, her favourite, her tone is softening. She seems to shuffle her own hands. She strokes her own hair. What up?

But was it? I push.

Her appearance is anguished. I don’t know, baby boy! she tells me in response.

I nod my head. I breathe out loud for a few seconds. What’s the name at the bottom of the letter you’ve been asked to bring here today? I ask.

The sentence takes her by surprise. She has yet to produce the article. She is not sure how I know there’s correspondence to be handed over.

It’s unnamed. But it’s not exactly a letter, she adds.

I call out to a screw called Rapattas: Permission to take a letter from Mumsy, Gov!

Ordinarily he’s all right. He can beat me at ping pong and he knows it. This gives him an unworthy and worthless point over me and I enjoy him enjoying it. You learn quickly to give in to the little things, with screws. Sod’s Law that this is one morning when he’s bored (the Visits Room is very quiet) and/or he has been asked to keep an extra-special eye on the visitors of anyone currently in the Segregation Unit. Usually calm and collected, this morning Rapattas wants to know the colour of your tears, your stools, and everything else in between, so he approaches like a polar bear preying on quarry. Holding out his right arm, he wants to know what I want to read.

Me first, he says pedantically—and Mumsy, good as gold, hands the squidgy dollop of dough the sheets of paper she has produced from her bag.

I would like to point out to the Governor that there are members of staff who would do worse than to visit an optician’s office or the diagnosis studio of a first class teacher of dyslexics. Screw browses the writing as though it’s Finnegans Wake . The anticipation as he studies is like a toothache. What has Dott written? I want to go back to my cell to read it.

Pardon me, Rapattas says to my mum, but what’s this?

A letter, I’m about to say.

It’s a work of fiction, my mum interrupts. Rapattas accepts the information with a nod of the head. A work of fiction? The screw’s brow is furrowed and twitching. I’m about to find out why but for the moment I am ignorant. Mum adds: It’s from his sister. It’s a story for her GCSE English.

Rapattas nods again. Big-minded literary critic that he obviously is, he replies, She’s got talent. But love stories aren’t really my thing.

A love story? I’m thinking as he hands the two sheets of paper to me. I can remember the first time he held me in his arms, I read quickly.

The handwriting is tidy, tight and discreet. It occurs to me that I have never seen Dott’s own handwriting but since learning that I’m to receive the message I’ve imagined the script to be the chaotic cloud formations and heroin scratches of a mid-career mass-market rapist. Yeah. I’ve expected the writing to be a scream. I’ve even expected the writing to look like Dott himself. I’ll come back to that so-called ‘letter’—this Mills and Boon romantic fantasy—in a moment. Why? Because I only glance briefly at it for a couple of seconds and I don’t know the full score. It’s an empty moment. It shouldn’t be, but it is. The thought strikes me once again. Whoever sent what’s been sent knows Mum’s address. How can this not add weight to Dott’s argument?

There are two letters, actually, Mum tells me. Or two things. She’s out of her depth somewhat, and she knows it.

Ashamed of myself—just acting up, really, and putting on a show, playing the giddy goat—I’m getting bolshy. In my mind I’m going Jesus, let me have them then!

The first ‘letter’ is on standard issue lined A4, with the blue ink scoured deeply into the weft; but the second has been typed. It’s full of typographical errors. But as Dott has not been allowed into the Education block, I am wondering how he’s had access to a computer and a printer.

The last line of the fourth paragraph of the handwritten letter—after a lot of waffle, breeze and guff about a moonlit night, a clinch on a beach, the scent of his aftershave and the bristles on his chin—reads as follows: Please go to a search engine and enter ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Hair Shirt’.

I printed the results out for you, Willy, says Mum, busting proud. That’s as far as I read. Promise.

I see what Dott has done: he’s covered his arse. That’s what the cunt has done: he’s covered his rapist arse. He has assumed (correctly) that no one will want to read more than a few paragraphs of pseudo-erotic bullshit, and he’s started his message proper from that point on. The instruction to seek out Prometheus and Hair Shirt—it’s not directed at me. It’s Mum’s. It’s Mumsy’s property.

Thanks. Have you any news to bring me, Ma?

I’m jealous to be sharing these facts. Plus, I don’t want her involved. I can’t help but believe that knowledge—sniffing its rim—is a dangerous ting.

Not really.

Allow it.

The second piece of writing is a printout—or a copy-type of a printout: as I say, full of typos and that. The instruction, it seems to me, to consult websites was for Mum’s benefit and not mine. She confirms this theory.

I typed directly from the screen, she says. And I knew I was part of your game, Willy. Rightly or wrongly. I knew.

There’s no game.

I didn’t read any further, I swear, she tells me. I knew the first bit was disguise. I’m not stupid.

She’s not. I stuff the pages into my tracky bottoms. Confined as I have been down block, I am keen to receive a second opinion about what I have done to Julie. For the moment I want to forget the letters and I want to know how the outside world is viewing my behaviour.

Do you blame me? I ask Mum, knowing that with a mother’s innate fifth-gear drive towards intuition, she will understand what I’m getting at.

I don’t approve, Willy, she says, after a pause.

That not what man ask.

Talk properly.

That’s not what I said, I try again.

Mum disagrees with my verdict. She invested your money, William; that’s hardly worth a slap.

She invest it with another man as my motherfucking banker!

Don’t use that language in front of your mother. I deplore violence.

Envy drives my next question. What’s he like? I ask.

Who’s, Bailey? No, the Pope, I think. Yes, Bailey, I say to Mumsy.

I’ve never met him. Why do you ask?

Nothing.

What a grave disgrace I must truly be, I have seconds to consider. In for what I did, and not for what they comprehend nothing about whatever.