David Mathew - O My Days

Don’t boys me, Dott!

Alfreth! the Cookery Gov shouts from the other side of the room.

Meaney is back on his feet, resembling, it seems to me, a newborn calf; he is not at all steady on his pins.

If you two start creating it’s the fucking block.

We’re cool, Gov, I tell the guy.

Good. Do your pots. Now.

Unless it was me that Dott gave that information to. It’s worse than amnesia, this thought I know something I can’t reach. It blunders around my body in the form of a concentrated squirt of anxiety; it follows my bloodlines, capillaries and veins. Who am I to Dott, right now, as I flinch the dead blubber and skin from the flat of a saucepan, using a washing-up wand whose hair is threadbare.

Are you listening, Dott? I say.

Can’t remember how many of these stains were here in the first place.

Fuck the stains. Are you listening?

He sounds as petulant as a schoolboy as he continues: If that fat bugger thinks I’m cleaning up earlier deposits he’s having a bubble bath.

O my days! Dott? Will you fuck the stains, please? I’ve got a punchline.

Go on.

By now I don’t much care who is eavesdropping. Full comprehension comes only to the totally immersed; and these guys around me—my contemporaries—have only toes in the water.

You’re saving up, aren’t you? I half-ask and half-dictate.

Dott favours me with a new-bike-at-Christmas expression.

That’s a nice way of putting it, he replies. Let me ask you, though, to clarify yourself.

If it’s true, I go on slowly—if it’s true you can steal time from us, as a so-called favour—and I gotta say, Dott, we’ve a lot of us been sleeping a lot late—then you’re not doing it to be nice, are you? Nice don’t work. Not for you. With nice you’re still going backward. With nice you’re dying , blood. You’re selling something, cuz; you’re getting something back, I lie?

You don’t lie.

But whatever it is, you’re saving it all up. Collecting it.

The fuck are you two gassing at? Chellow interrupts.

Allow it, Chells, I say to the man, barely turning to murmur over my left shoulder. Back to Dott I state: You’re building up a stockpile of juice.

Dott wipes his hands with a now-smudged tea towel. Asks me: What does Kate think about kings?

Admitting it is like a paper cut. Breath—hot breath, oven breath, desert breath—is a lump at the core of my torso. They can be grown, I tell him. Are you one, Dott?

He shakes his head.

Not me, Billy Boy, he answers, still grinning. It’s you .

I feel sick, but he’s not finished.

Me, I was no more than your gardener, he says, and turns away.

So why the secrecy, Ostrich-man?

I was hoping to leave without the agony of a goodbye, he answers, rather elegantly. Take that as a compliment.

Nevertheless, I’m still cross with Ostrich. Sure, I say. And I hope I never fucking see you again either.

You got it wrong, blood. He doesn’t elaborate on the point.

What time you leaving? I ask him.

Whatever the weather, blood. I’m ready.

Ready to meet Carewith again, I say.

Ostrich laughs. Creo que las cosas, poco a poco, van cambiando , he replies, translating it immediately afterwards. I think that, bit by bit, things are changing. Yeah. All the way to Lincolnshire, rudeboy, and I’ll probably end up pad-buds with Carewith waste. I’m in the pink, blood. Ostrich snorts derisively. Thought man would never see that wasteman ever again.

Carewith? I ask. Carewith bless, blood.

Ostrich sniffs away the very suggestion.

I know this non- verbal utterance of old: he doesn’t wish to pursue the matter. Sour scores, maybe; it’s not important to me. Ostrich wants to talk hills.

True says in Big Man Jail, blood, man can see hills innit.

Swear down fact, I tell him.

Point blank?

Sure, blood. Not like this rat-infested khazi, rudeboy.

O my days! Allow that, says Ostrich. God’s poetry, fam. Hills innit.

God’s poetry, I repeat. From our own pads we see walls.

There is a silence, an interlude.

Then: There’s suttin I wanna say, Ostrich tells me, the expression on his face succeeding to change the subject as effectively as the alteration in his tone of voice does, about last year. Bout this time last year, rudeboy. Evidently he’s tired already of God’s poetry.

What is it?

Moby Dick , blood.

Excuse me?

The CDs, rudeboy, he explains patiently. D’you remember that yoot, Emma Hutt? Fat as the ace of spades, blood.

Sure. Emma Hutt. Benjamin Hutt in reality—an early example, looking back, of the tendency to gainsex a prisoner’s given forename. The difference is, with Hutt’s pear-shaped figure, childbearing hips and F-cup breasts—the yoot asks for the comparison to be made. In the end, after a list of questionable decisions regarding the guy’s personal hygiene, his attitude to authority, his hunger strikes, bed-wetting, bed- soiling, arson, violence to prisoners physically larger than himself, and eventual spiral down into the hearing of voices, the speaking in tongues, and the sighting of ghosts and man-sized insects dressing up in his clothes, he is captured on a Psych Form and assigned a weekly appointment with a therapist. Final straw is when Hutt spies the face of Jesus in his porridge one weekend morning, and he’s carted off to a secured Psychiatric Hospital on the Isle of Man.

What about him?

The Moby Dick CDs went missing. Recall it, Alfreth? We all have our cells spun, couldn’t find ’em. Hutt borrows ’em from the Library.

I remember. Boy does block for it, I say. Three weeks.

Allow it, says Ostrich. Class as damage to prison property. It was me.

What was?

Stole ’em from his pad innit. Door’s open to collect our dinner. Man goes in, licks a twelve-point-five of G.V., some green Rizlas and this box of CDs with, um, fucking, whale fucking thing on the box.

Why? I ask.

Ostrich thins his lips; his eyes are bright with the memory, the conquest. Man puts the box under me dinner plate, blood.

It’s a big box.

Check it, Ostrich agrees, smirking. Tray’s like a wedding cake, cuz. Like la Tour Eiffel . Screws don’t see dick.

If you been caught, I begin.

To which he shrugs. I was borrowing it, forgot the rules. Give it back. Let the fat bug snitch and sneeze. Tomorrow morning, head’s in the khazi innit. Why? Well, one to show the youngers who’s boss. And two. Shottin’, blood, shottin’. Can’t shot brown or sniff, so. Shottin’s what I do. It’s like when that Psychology Squaw says why don’t you don’t do shottin’. Don’t do shottin? he wails incredulously. Mean, why not I don’t breev, blood? Ya-nar?

Nodding. But Ostrich-man, I argue, who’s gonna buy an eighteen-CD box set of Moby Dick ? What’s you hoping to get for it?

Pack-a burn? Nay-way, man starts to listen, blood: that night. And it’s good, Bill. Decide I don’t want to sell it on; wanna hear it all out. Wannit be first book I ever finish. Like a project.

Why is he telling me his war stories? I wonder at this moment.

I’m up all night listening, volume down low, continues Ostrich. Couple time, screw breaks my concentration. What’s that? This is before the cell-spins, rudeboy, no one knows it’s missing yet, not even Emma Hutt. Radio, gov. Educating my mind, gov. And yeah, so what if it’s four in the a.m? What have I got’s so important I need my beauty sleep?

Fair enough. How you get rid of it?

Didn’t, Alfie: simplicity itself, blood. Man save his Canteen. Stead ordering them fucking pick-a-chews and Mars Bars and noodles and shit, man buys what? Check it. Man buy postage stamps from me spends. Ostrich snaps his fingers and laughs like a rattle of machine gun fire. Send the CDs to Mumsy and set fire to the box. Saves on weight.