David Mathew - O My Days

That was always your father’s answer as well, she adds, all uppity.

No further comment is necessary, I feel. I don’t even ask after my sisters as I can’t see the point. As grim as it is, I want to get back to my cell. I know that Mum must have sat for nearly four hours on a train to get here, up in the hills, and then the taxi from the tumbleweed station, but I don’t want to speak to anyone anymore. Apart from Ronald Dott. Allow it the cunt wins.

I remember my manners. Thank you, Mumsy, I say.

There’s nothing more to add, really, is there? Except this.

Billy.

Forgive the four paras of gobshite. Necessary work. Boring but you know how it goes. I’m sure you’ve guessed the reason yet. Now listen. Prometheus was a cunning, deceitful piece of work. No awe for the gods, ridiculed Zeus, although he was favored by him for assisting him in his fight against his father Cronus. The Ancient Greek means ‘forethought’. Got that? Thinking about it before the act, until. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, P is credited with the creation of man ‘in godlike image’ from clay. Some say Zeus. But it was P who hit Z on the head with a rock.As a result, from Z’s head popped the Goddess Athena. Some say. Others say Zeus demanded a sacrifice from Man to the Gods—to show willing and that. P would’ve earned your scribble of approval, Billy. Slashed an ox and counted it out into two piles. One with meat and most of the fat; the other, the bones covered with fat. Choose, Zeus, choose! Zeus knew that if he claimed to be duped he’d have an excuse to vent his anger on mortal man. He chose the bones. Denied men the secret of fire. Prometheus felt sorry and took fire from the hearth of the gods. Taught us to cook. And this really pissed Z off. P is taken to Mount Caucasus, where an eagle pecks at his liver. Forever, Billy. Imagine that. What’s the nearest you’ve got? Fuck incarceration. Imagine a million years of bee stings. That was P’s sentence. We’ve got off lightly. Or you have, anyway. Even the Greeks back then understood that the liver is one of the few bits of the body that can regenerate itself spontaneously. That’s creative cruelty, that is. That’s World War Two cruelty. It’s what I need but I can’t find, Billy Alfreth. By the time I’m freed, there will be nothing more left than cockroaches, army ants and wasps—which sounds impossible, right? You need an ecosystem, right? I’m not sure. Prometheus got 30,000 years, the poor bastard. My sentence isn’t so far away from that, I fear. Same as that poor bastard.

I experience a shiver of remorse, knowing that Mum might have read this too, despite her claim to the contrary.

And then I read:

Save me, Billy.

I am sitting in my cell in the Segregation Unit, wondering how or why I should save a man who has mutilated fourteen women. I clean my windowsills with my fingertips. There has to be more to life than this, ho ho. So he’s suffering? Join the club, Dott, I want to holler. He goes on to inform me of what I already know about a Hair Shirt: ‘An adornment worn at various times in the history of the Christian faith, for the purposes of the mortification of the flesh rough cloth, generally woven from goats’ hair, worn close to the skin, itchy a breeding-ground for lice, which would have increased the discomfort worn by ascetics, saints, monks, and lay persons.’

What’s he getting at? A self-realised sensation of victimhood?

The next bit is what gets me to the gut.

I was there, Billy. It was me. No one else. I used to think kindness was the way, but I was wrong. I was travelling the wrong way with kindness. I’d be closer to the end if I’d slit your throat. The water was useless. Some people make their way through time; some people make their way through people. It’s my only shot. I’m sorry I’ve hurt who I’ve hurt. So sorry. But I really wish I’d smashed you up a bit when I had the chance. You have no idea how much kindness has hindered me so far.

He kissed her and she melted in his arms. The moon was an uncommon sight of cheesy blue.

I am starting to get a feel for what’s going on.

Returning from the Segregation Unit is like returning home from another country. I arrive back to certain pieces of extraordinary news. Carewith is gone. Carewith has been shipped out—to Big Man Jail, Lincolnshire. While I can’t imagine a place with more hills than this, I hear the news with a rigorous sensation of misplaced nostalgia, as I’ve been there. It’s not just a case of the grass being greener; it’s the case of injustice that I share with Ostrich—that someone has earned his promotion before me.

Ostrich is incensed. What man have to do? he asks me.

I am trying to keep him sweet when I say: It just a jail, blood.

Wrong response by a big fucking yard.

It Big Main Jail! He’s irate that I don’t take part in cutting up and distributing his cake of impotent rage. I fear the worst. I have seen Ostrich livid at losing a gramme of Golden Virginia tobacco at chess or draughts. I have seen what he’s capable of with a melted-down CD case.

Whatever the weather, I tell him. Do you want a burn?

He regards the question with no small amount of suspicion. Indeed the question is foolhardy and misplaced on my behalf.

For what? he wants to know.

We are sitting on the steps that lead up to the next landing.

To smoke, bruv, I reply.

What’s the price?

He’s got a point: kindness and generosity is as conspicuous as bacon in our chocolate mousses. Tastes funny. Looks even iller.

No price. Gratis , cuz.

Ostrich gives me one of them ones where you don’t know if he understands he’s been a victim of a piss-take. Right now, in the din, it’s touch and go. He wants and wants not to take it all broadside.

Here. I hand him a smoke. Lovingly rolled. And I do mean lovingly. Fact barges into my brain with the force of a shank through skin—I will miss Ostrich deeply if he goes to Big Man Jail. I’m glad it’s Carewith on the one-man train south, back to a normal life of smoke in the air and dust.

Fuck this healthy oxygen shit.

You’ve seen the wildlife documentaries: the fox on the railway line, night-time, eyes burning the sick colour of virulent pus. He’s out there cautious, blood. Wary. That’s how Ostrich accepts his burn.

Allow it, he tells me.

I nod my head in agreement.

When man back in Library? he asks.

Tomorrow.

I have work to do before then. Desperation as my whip—whip as in whip and not as in car—I start to compose a list of questions for Kate Thistle. I’m going to start flirting with her again, in a fresh style.

We go back and I realise I don’t have any writing paper left. Screw Nickels is an old-hand but he knows the ropes. I ask him for paper.

Use your bumwad allocation, he informs me.

So I do. Microscopic script on absorbant loo roll. Ready.

Good things come to he who waits. Granted access to the Library, I am informed by Miss Thistle that Miss Patterson has called in sick. In the absence of an authorised member of prison staff, the Library will not open for visits today. Miss Patterson has left a phone message detailing my administrative duties for the next six hours. For three hours in the morning and three in the afternoon it’s going to be just me and Kate. Result. I can scarcely believe my fucking luck. After a welcome that is as warm as it is wary, Miss Thistle invites me to put the kettle on—to ‘brew up’ as she puts it. In order to squash any thoughts in her mind that I am taking her presence here as anything other than ordinary, I pretend I can’t remember how she takes her tea.