David Mathew - O My Days

Infecting?

Yeah; and everyone in a different way.

Don’t cry, Miss.

Sorry. It’s. Sod it, I’m having another gin; this is hard. Do you want one?

The screw will smell it on my breath, Miss.

Say it’s mouthwash.

Gin-flavoured mouthwash? Anyway, we’re not allowed to have mouthwash: it’s got alcohol in it.

Then I drink alone, Billy? There were children there—babies even!—who were shrivelled up like walnuts. They looked eighty. There were teenagers, their own bodies growing at different speeds, at different times—torsos twice as long as their legs, girls of ten who appeared pregnant with children they weren’t carrying or hadn’t even conceived… great bulky pregnant tummies. Christ, that’s better. Are you sure I can’t tempt you?

You can tempt me. Then I’m piss-tested and fucked.

You get the picture, though?

Sure. It was a freakshow. Any radiation thereabouts?

No. And don’t belittle this, Billy. I think you are. When you’ve seen a ninety year old woman gaining weight to take on her middle-aged spread, mate, it’s no laughing matter. She looked about forty but she was ninety.

Bit like you.

Similar. But more like Dott, Billy: moving backwards through time. Born at whatever age, like he was when he soothed your bee-stings, and getting younger. Younger as we would see it. Disappearing back to the egg. Me, I’m different: I’m going in the right direction. Only slowly. My years are longer—longer than yours. I was twenty in 1960, you think I’m late thirties now. You do the sums!

…Why was O’Farrell suing?

Because he was frozen! In time, Billy! He wasn’t ageing!

Then where do I come in, innit?

You don’t come in. You go out.

Suddenly a screw pops the door open. Come on, Alfreth, he orders.

Officer! I didn’t hear you come in!

No, I bet you didn’t. Miss Thistle. Toe-rag here needs his sustenance.

Of course. Off you go, Billy. Speak soon. Tomorrow?

If there’s time.

That’s what Kate Thistle told me, Dott.

So now you know, he replies. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Knowledge is one thing…

The Cookery Gov is approaching. What’s this? he asks. Fucking sewing circle, lads? You couldn’t stand each other half an hour ago. Now you’re bending each other’s ears.

Dott is slow to reply. But then he asks: Who says we couldn’t stand each other, sir? I don’t remember saying that.

The Cookery Gov snorts. Word goes round, Dorothy. I hear tings.

I don’t talk like that, sir, Dott adds quietly.

You won’t talk like anything if you don’t get a pissing move on, son. I want you to do your pots in the next ten minutes. Lesson’s nearly over.

The lesson is nearly over , I repeat in my head.

Dott is about to bust a chuckle. Maybe I should slug the fucker with a rolling pin, Gov, he says.

Just try it, wasteman, I say, no humour in my voice.

Hey, Meaney! Roller! Dott calls. Shall I repeat your pantomime here with Alfreth?

Fuck you, rape-boy! Meaney replies.

Or I could, Gov, I could kiss him—like those screws did.

The Cookery Gov is confused. The fuck are you on, boy? he asks.

We’re just chatting shit. We’ll get the washing-up done. Stand on me.

I fucking will, son.

The Cookery Gov walks away.

Silly fat cunt, mumbles Dott. Has no idea, has he, Billy-Boy?

Of what?

Of what I could make him do. And what’s with the Dorothy shit?

I shrug my shoulders. It’s a game he plays sometimes. Like he’ll call Meaney Maggie, I tell him. Or me Wilhema. Feminizing us.

Why Maggie?

First name Magnus. Not much else he can do with that.

Magnus Meaney? Dott laughs. What did they do for an encore?

Who?

His parents.

Yo, Dott! Meaney calls. You boysing me, blood?

No, you’re blessed, mate, Dott answers.

Thought I heard my name being mentioned, cuz.

Dott fixes him with a stare. You’re mistaken, my friend, he says. Now drink from the hot water tap, you waste of time. No hands. Do it!

The command is in my head, every bit as loud as it must be in Meaney’s, I reckon; but it’s like an echo. Sometimes, unexpectedly at night, there’s a fault in the TV transmission in the pads. If I watch the box late at night, there is a slight delay between what I hear coming from my own set and what I hear from the cells in which sets are tuned to the same channel, beside, above and below me. Electronic stammer. I can hear it second-hand.

Sweat beading on his skin, Meaney turns on the hot tap.

He tests the temperature with his left knuckles. Then he bends at the waist and drops his mouth to the flow, gulping greedily.

The Cookery Gov is not impressed. He shouts the yoot’s name.

O my days! says Tweed, a skinny boy with bad speed-teeth.

Fucking stop that! the Gov calls. A few strides and he’s minimised the distance between his beer gut and Meaney’s protruding backside.

Allow him, I say to Dott.

He’s thirsty, Dott tells me. You don’t know what thirst is. He does.

So you say. Pick on someone else. What’s he done to you?

Oh, call me Mr Compassion, he adds, letting go of Meaney.

The yoot’s knees bend and he drops to the floor. In the mêlée that follows I say to Dott: Have I met you there, blood? What’s my place?

Your place in the world, he sighs. Wouldn’t we all like to know?

I bite my lip; let the surge of anger simmer and cool.

You’re scared, Dott, aren’t you? You don’t look it, cuz, granted that, but you are. You’re getting younger, you’re disappearing.

I’m getting fatter, Billy-Boy, I don’t know about disappearing.

But you said it yourself. You thought you could stop the flow back to being an infant, I explain with as much patience as I can muster; you thought you could do it by being kind, being generous. You soothed my sting—because you didn’t want to reverse, you didn’t want to be a baby.

It was you who was being a baby!

I was a baby!

You were seven years old! And frightened of a bee! Man or a mouse?

Whatever, Dott. Am I right? Then you realised it’s not about kind things that’ll keep you anchored. You need to exercise the black muscles in your warped little rapist’s soul. To stop you rotting. To keep your numbers—to keep your age—going north instead of south. Am I fucking right?

Spot on with sugar and cream, is Dott’s reply.

And you’re something to do with the silences, aren’t you? I ask. Be honest, Dott; this place has got too quiet sometimes. And it’s you.

His smile doesn’t falter, doesn’t gutter; it stays put. So ugly and unrefined is it that I shudder with the sudden notion that it will never go away. It’s as though he’s been frozen—the wind has changed while he’s pulling faces—and now the rictus will linger.

You got that bit right at least, he says. I’m helping some of you wacky kids to pass the time faster. I’m taking time .

Total immersion, I’m told, is the best way to learn a new language and to get to grips with the nuances of a foreign culture. But how long have I been totally immersed in this one? Every time I think I understand the meaning of a word I’m thrown a boomerang I fail to catch; I’m tossed a banana skin to slip on. Who was it? Who was it who told me? My brain—it must be in part down due to the heat in the Cookery Room—but my brain is slow. I cannot recall who it was who told me that Dott has been making these generous offers. But like Mumsy says, a bargain’s only a bargain if you really want it.

What’s in it for you? I ask.

It’s a hobby, Dott replies.