David Mathew - O My Days

Just a visit, I begin.

Okay, no worries. If they’ll let you out you can visit.

No. Julie, listen. Just a visit I want you to make.

Oh, Billy—of course I’ll visit. I wasn’t on the straight when I said you can’t see Patrice. Maybe it was my hormones jabbering.

No. Not to me. I don’t care if you don’t see me anymore. You’ve broken my heart, Julie.

She is baffled. Then to who? she asks.

Another D. Another Defendant. His name is Ronald Dott. Ask him one question, I say to Julie.

What’s the hullabaloo this morning? asks Kate Thistle, once we’ve earned a moment to ourselves.

Miss Patterson is unexpectedly back at work, but she’s taking a piss-break. Female staff are obliged to go downstairs to the other toilets owing to a plumbing fuck-up in the Ladies’ shitter on the ones. We’ve got at least five minutes, what with all the doors she’ll have to lock and unlock. With a bit of good fortune, I think to myself, the staff toilets are akin to ours: always out of bumwad and with honky flushes that mean you have to pull on the chain for about an hour like a demented campanologist. You don’t want the next yoot along to see what you’ve left behind. I always make sure I have my movement before Movements—not that I’ve had much to expel, not of late. I’ve been off my feed for some time.

I answer Kate Thistle’s question with a shrug and a tilt of my head. Four yoots on A Wing, I tell her, started a riot.

Oh, how exciting, she replies in a sarky, ironic tone that implies she is anything but impressed. About anything in particular?

I could say random cuntishness, Miss. That’s what it normally is, innit. Random cuntishness from the screws to us, leading to random cuntishness back. Or just us: playing up, as Mumsy used to say.

But not this time? she asks. No bad food, no cell spins?

You’re learning the lingo, Miss. But no. It’s Dott. He’s taking.

Taking what?

Taking back part of his investment.

Predictably enough, we’re in the Library. We’re not alone. The prisoners from the Spanish class—learning Spanish—have their turn to visit, and there are eight of them present, with their teacher. Don’t know her name; she’s new, I think. Throughout what we’re trying to say—Kate and I—we are hassled by these Ds and Co-Ds, re-issuing True Crime, horror-lite, some Spanish textbooks and dictionaries. Only one of the guys—by gigglingly asking me what Julie is gonna make of my new friendship with Kate—actually acknowledges the fact that I am having a conversation. You often become almost invisible when you achieve a Redband. There is more concern about borrowing a pen to fill in a magazine requisition.

Investment?

I nod my head. He’s put quite a lot in the kitty. Thank you, blood. Next Tuesday, all being. For Dott it’s payback time. Literally. Pay, back, time.

Whereas mine nods, Kate’s shakes—her head, that is.

I was beginning to think I understood all of this, she tells me.

Hard lines. He’s buying time, Kate. In the sense you know about. He’s trading. What he gives with one hand—like taking away yoots’ spare time, to make time go quick time—he just fucking, takes back with the other, Miss. He causes damage, like you say. It keeps him anchored at the right age. He don’t wanna slip backwards so he needs to trade some damage.

What happened in the riot? Kate wants to know.

One ear-split; one nose-split; one hospitalisation: a left eye.

Great. That should keep him going.

He wants to die, Kate.

Who? This voice belongs to a weasel named Peel, who is standing in front of me with a yellow English-Spanish dictionary in his hands. I can help.

Wash your mouth out, young man, Kate tells him.

Sorry, Miss. Seriously, Alfie—who?

There is no point in lying. Half the population of Puppydog Wing and a good number on the normal Wings, too—they want to die. From time to time. The impulse grows. I’ve had it myself, way back when. The future being black, and all that. You can either ping yourself with the elastic band around your wrist—get that tiny spark of discomfort that constitutes a replacement for self-harming—or you can bang your head on the pad wall and get a Self-Harm report written out on you. Or you can properly self-harm, of course—there’s always that option. There’s all the fun of the fair, rudeboy! For some yoots, the phrase ‘the CD’s scratched’ has a completely different interpretation: that yoot will have forearms like city road maps. That yoot will go through cigarette lighters faster than packets of burn itself. For that yoot, it’s a case of tortures for courses; torture, torture, everywhere, and not a qualified shrink.

Dott.

Uncharacteristically, but not unexpectedly, Peel is quickly irate. I’d pull the switch on that wasteman myself. Fucking dreaming about the cunt now.

Do you want that renewed? I ask.

Yeah, mate. He brightens suddenly, pointing a finger. And do you know what else I want, geez? Deseamos un régimen democrático . We want a democratic regime. See, Miss? Clearly pleased with himself, he taps his temple with the same forefinger. All going in nice. Good teacher, that Kate.

Miss Thistle to you, please, Kate replies.

Peel’s face is a squashed meringue of confusion. Nah, Miss. Teacher Kate is a good teacher, is what I’m saying. Cheers, Alfie. Ándale!

I have stamped his book. Miss Patterson has returned.

And at first I’m disappointed not to have enough time to remark on the coincidence of forenames—a third Kate, me still smiting from being a displaced Billy—but then I realise that it hardly needs mentioning. Everything else is fucked. We do not speak—we do not have the chance to speak—for nearly another hour, and even then it is as part of my tea- making duties. I am afraid that Movements will take me back to my pad before I can talk properly. Fortunately, when the guys from the I.T. class are in for their browsing session, one of them—whose name I don’t know—somehow manages to discredit the honour of another yoot’s country of origin. Additionally fortunately, they both had pens in their hands at the time—to order their softcore bash—and so the resulting conflict is as bad as I need it to be.

Miss Patterson thumbs the green button and the radios whistle and whine.

In come the desperados! The fight is eventfully dispersed (one of the screws gets a new biro tattoo above the wide left wing of his ridiculous moustache) and when the reinforcements arrive, the other yoots are escorted back to their Computer Literacy textbooks and flickering screens. Miss Patterson—it seems—could do with a nice lie down. Well, it seems as though she might go for a swig of her own hidden hooch, but as that is not an option she repairs once again for the Ladies Room downstairs.

Kate Thistle and I are alone at last. It almost feels romantic. She looks me in the eyes. She places one hand on my thigh.

We don’t have long, she tells me.

I went there to heal my eyesight, Billy. Cause you know what they say: time healing everything and all that. So what? It’s a cliché. I buy that. And I bought it then as well, after that visit from the guy who wanted to sue the Oasis. I went out there. I was desperate, Billy, you have to understand that. But time heals everything, and I wanted the healing that time’s supposed to bring.

My family and friends thought I’d gone insane. Trust me: these weren’t the days when it was normal for a single young woman to bugger off to the desert, with no plans that didn’t revolve around getting a suntan. I ignored them all; I was hooked.

Have you ever been addicted to anything, Alfreth? It’s nasty—but that’s what I had: an addiction. When you’re miserable without something and then getting that something makes you feel happy, then I reckon you’re an addict. I was addicted—to the idea of time being my healer.