David Mathew - O My Days

I’m baffled.

Then she can burn ’em onto fresh CDs and send ’em back. Now they’re mine. Hey presto, blood! Man’s play it six, seven time.

Your point being? I ask.

One line: The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run . Think about it, Alfreth.

It is a question of now or never.

The desert, I tell him. Why not say you were there, cunt?

I wunt. But he does not question which desert, or what I’m trying to say, or any of that time-wasting nonsense.

Yeah you were, Charlie. Grow up and stroke your bruises. I know you were there, Giggles, so don’t shit me, right, soldier?

Man got wrong man, blood, Ostrich gives me, turning his gaze to the left.

Just that: a flat denial. Nothing to talk about. Nothing along the lines of questioning my sanity, which would have been fair enough in most situations. The only thing that occurs to me, in Ostrich’s defence—something I might as well get ready for—is him saying something like: I thought you was talking about a club or a pub: the Desert. Where something happened. I’m prepared, internally, for something like this now.

I reply: Bollocks. Kate told me.

Ostrich gives me it straight barrel. I need to get out of this, he says.

He looks into my eyes; they are grainy with silver-red hair’s-breadths of bad sleep and weeping. He grips my arm.

Still me daddums, blood.

With which he releases his hold on me as abruptly as he took it up, and he begins to pull on his fingers. Is Ostrich losing his mind? I’m wondering. Has he lost it already? Where do you find a lost mind? Where could he have put it?

What daddums? I ask. You were there, blood.

I have no idea why, at this point, he has mentioned his father. The only time he has ever mentioned his father, to my mind, was when he was talking about killing him. And even that guy wasn’t a real father. Has Ostrich received a letter from his old man? A letter from a missing father is enough to splinter the strongest mind; to shatter the most robust of souls. I cannot tell you anything about my own daddums.

There summing what, cuz? Ostrich asks.

He is jumpy. We are having three or four conversations at this point—and none of them makes sense.

Fucking THERE. Don’t stripe me, blood, I add—wary of advice that I’ve given to plenty of yoots myself.

I’m leaving.

Yeah I know, I tell him.

Gibberish-mode is taking over. Things are sliding and I can’t stop them. The pains I faked to get me into Kate Wollington’s room in Health Care—they come on for real. I start to sweat like a rapist in a schoolyard. My eyes mirror the redness and rawness of Ostrich’s own; I can feel the capillaries pop like champagne corks. I’m trying not to notice, Ostrich-man, I remark—but that doesn’t make much sense either. Gather your thoughts. It occurs to me that just at this moment my neurons are being polished by Dott. I have to concentrate. We don’t have much time.

I say: But listen to this. Are you listening? I’m a king in the desert.

Thank God it happens: a questioning after my own sanity. The impotence makes me feel stronger, like I do have some truth to tell.

Fuck are you talking about, Alfster-blood? Ostrich asks.

You were there. In the desert. Tell me if I can make it any clearer.

We are having five conversations now, or so it seems to me, and none of them makes any more sense than a few minutes earlier. But all of them—present in our predicament—are—What am I trying to say?

Fuck off out of my head, Dott! I scream silently. There is no response.

O my days! says Ostrich.

We are numb with a powerlessness, thoughtlessness and silence that has become less rare than it should be. We don’t know how to carry on.

So why the secrecy, Ostrich-man? I ask again—softer now.

Every argument follows a code of explosion, eye of the hurricane, then dust. Every argument is chatting breeze, in one sense; as serious as cancer, the next.

No secrecy, blood. Only just find out.

So who you hitting these days? she asks me.

This is not blood slang. This is sarcasm.

No one, Julie, I answer. Thanks for coming. How’s Patrice?

She’s had the fucking oopy cough, innit.

She’s had the what?

The oopy cough. It was a real awful couple days, says Julie.

Whooping cough? I ask.

That’s what I said! she protests. Coughing its little lungs out, weren’t she? But she’s better now. Thanks for your concern, Billy.

I didn’t know! Are you sure?

Already we are going wrong; I can sense her getting angry. When she asks me, What do you mean, are you sure? that little vein pulses in her temple. It’s still a thing I find cute about her.

Sure it’s whooping cough? I add. Did you take her to the doctor?

No, Billy, I took her to B&Q. What sort of question is that? Vein pulsing harder now. I’m a good mother to our daughter, Billy, you know.

I’m not saying you’re not!

It occurs to me right now that Julie has arrived intent on achieving a disagreement. Spoiling for a fight, they say in some of the crappy books I borrow from the Library when my brain is too tired to focus on anything more substantial. She is leaving me, I realise suddenly. Paternal concern battles with lovelorn pride.

What I mean is, I begin.

Oh I know what you mean, William! she interrupts. You mean I can’t look after our daughter without setting fire to your bank account—or so you think. And don’t pretend you weren’t gonna bring that subject up either.

It is not the case that we must place our hands palms down on the reinforced plastic tables in the Visits Room, but the common word is that it’s a good idea to do so. It keeps the screws happy and relaxed. Especially when matters start getting a tad frayed between con and visitor—as is clearly the case right now. A screw named Southern is not far from my table. I place my hands palm down on the surface. I have a reputation as a hitter, after all.

I try to be reasonable, saying Julie, Julie, please. What I’m getting at is, whooping cough takes more than a couple of days, usually.

She laughs like a seal. So you’re getting a medical degree now, are you? Tell me what my symptoms are, Billy. Why don’t you do that?

Your symptoms?

That’s what I said. What’s wrong with me?

And God I’m struggling, now. I want to hit her again; I really do. Not in a moment of red mist, as I did before. I am thinking about it. I want to do it. The hands on the table—they are balling into fists.

Julie notices. Is that for my benefit? she asks coolly.

The vein in her temple isn’t moving anymore; she has calmed down. My impending violence has soothed her. She has been waiting for this to happen. Provoking it. The significance of what she has said is now clear crystal.

You’re pregnant, I tell her. So what are we saying? Morning sickness?

My delivery is so offhand that it makes Julie blink. The disgust I feel—not disgust that some other guy has slept with her, which is bad enough, and will need dealing with, but my disgust with myself that I can feel good by making the mother of my child feel bad—is whelming. How has it come to this? Pot-shots and name-calling.

Who is it, may I ask? Bailey, I suppose.

You don’t know him, Julie replies, a little closer, I suspect, to tears than she is letting on. The remark is ambiguous.

I don’t know who? Know Bailey, or your new squeeze?

Oh, you definitely know my new squeeze, Billy.

I’m confused.

Bailey’s gone.

She is finding this difficult. Adrenalin is washing through my system as I decode the latest in a long line of riddles—all of them leading back to the arrival of Ronald Dott.