David Mathew - O My Days

Health hazard innit, says Sarson, bored—and I know we are about to embark on the same discussion as before.

There’s no choice. Nothing changes. I share a burn and consider provoking a fight. In the evening I take my thoughts for a walk. I sit on the can with the seat down, leaning forward to help ease the pain in my stomach, and I close my eyes, for something to do, tracing every step I know of Dellacotte Young Offenders, up here in the hills. In my mind’s eye I stroll back and forth to the Gym, to the Education Block, to the Segregation Unit. Nothing’s satisfying. I feel like I felt when I came in, drying out from alcohol for a few days. I am nervy, jumpy, tired. I visit, not in any way in the order of geographical convenience, but rather the opposite—to make the operation longer and more drawn out—the Wings, from A to H, backtracking on myself, crossing courtyards, following the yellow lines on the ground, inside which the delivery trucks and food trolleys must remain. And it’s still only nine. Nine o’clock, tick tock. Come on, life.

Come on, Dott. Show me.

Eventually it is morning. I must have slept because I can see and taste the dream that lingered longest, lingered hardest. In it I am flying again—flying towards the oily water of the Oasis. When I get there I pay with coins into a slot, once I’ve seated myself on the hard wooden bench on board the rowboat. The computer only knows two directions: to the Prison Ship—also called Oasis , as Dott reminds me in my sleep—and back again. The ship holds two hundred prisoners. It does not move. Looming quickly in my dream, the black walls of the ship, as high it seems as the walls of the nick in which I’m locked. There is no way to climb the bulwarks or the gunwales. I am stranded here, unless someone throws me down a rope. And if someone throws me down a rope it must mean I am a prisoner. Someone throws me down a rope.

Rise and shine, Alfreth, calls Screw Jones. My door is open. Not like you to need a wake up call, son.

Sick, sir.

Well you’ll be needing your Coco Pops then, won’t you, for energy.

Yes, sir.

In our batches of ten at a time we fall in line at the canteen door, near the Prison Officers’ main office on the Wing. I collect my cereal, my cube of juice (straw removed), and my carton of milk. I return to my pad. Immediately after eating I am sick into my sink. I clean the mess up and wash my hands, oxters and groin.

I am ready for work, but Screw Jones says: Are you sure you want to go back to duties today, Alfreth?

That’s twice now in the space of half an hour I haven’t heard him approaching my door. The first time he even gets as far as opening it without my noticing him in the vicinity; the second time the door has been left wide.

You look peaky, son.

Not sleeping well, sir, I tell him.

You could have fooled me, son. Jones laughs. We could hear you snoring from the Staff Mess. Kicking and grunting, you were.

Someone throws me down a rope. I start to climb, and with many a kick and with many a grunt I make progress. I can now smell more than the oil on the water; I can smell the confined aromas of two hundred lags in close quarters. The smell is nauseating. My powers of flight having abandoned me, I continue to climb. I reach the bulwark. There is no one to help me board ship. No one on deck either. The ship has spat out its inhabitants like the vile, wretched commodities they are. Deathly silence. No, not silence—I can hear the contaminated water lapping against the prison; I can hear the gentle swish and low hum of a motor as the computerised rowboat moves back to its points of origin. I am alone. Utterly on my tod. Until a yowling crosses the sky. The noise, so sudden, so loud, makes me start; instinctively I duck my head. It’s an aircraft speeding overhead, through the priceless blue. Dott’s words about the war raging return—as soon as I see the full stop dropping from the sky. I know what this is. The full stop swells into an inkblot; the inkblot puddings into a golf ball, even though it’s going to drop a long way from where I’m standing. Explosion is enormous. Water climbs high into the scorched air, dampening it down; a series of waves rocks the ship, as large and sturdy and apparently unmoveable as it is. Blades of fire chop along through these new currents, attracted by the oil. Fire sniffing at the oil pools and smears like an animal going about hunting business; fire eating water, like a parasite eating its host. Slow motion. Then fast.

For God’s sake, boy!

Someone is screaming and yelling at me.

Get below deck! They’re fighting again!

The face I see, contorted with anger and misplaced concern. A hand waving me towards its owner. It’s a door leading down below deck. Someone has risked his own health, maybe sanity, to knock some sense into me. He is beckoning me towards safety. I take the advice—slide on the oily water that has splashed over onto the planks; tumble headfirst down the stairs, nearly knocking my rescuer onto his arse as I go. He breaks my fall. Pain is like frost up and down my arms; it takes me a few seconds to recover, to take stock. Stifling heat. Reptile house stench. I straighten up; pick my bones up off the floor, fully conscious of eyes on me. There is no conversation; no murmurs, no reproof. Silent men in gangs, some standing, some sitting, all staring at me. A hundred men? Some craning for a better view. Two hundred? Now jostling: want to see me. Outside, closer than the first, a second bomb detonates. The ship is rocked, but down below decks the imprint on our reality is not so strong. A few people are knocked a metre or so to the side; nothing serious. Absurdly, there now comes the consternated quacking of a duck, from above.

Welcome back, says the man who called me down.

Welcome back.

It’s a peculiar way, I think, of addressing me. The sentence belongs to Kate Thistle; I have arrived in the Library, shop Movements having begun.

Feeling better? she asks.

Than what?

She appears confused. Than you have been?

Yeah, I’m fine. Where’s Angela?

Miss Patterson has just popped to the Cookery Class to beg, steal or borrow some teabags, Kate replies. We’ve gulped our way through a box in the last day or two. It’s been boring without you, Billy. She smiles.

Kate, what are you talking about? Miss Patterson’s only been back at work a day. She was ill, remember?

No, Billy, you were ill. Miss Patterson’s been back all week.

What day is it, Kate? I ask.

Friday.

I’ve lost two days. I remember Cookery on Tuesday.

You were ill, Kate replies, a little bit hesitantly.

He’s got to me, Kate, I say to her. The bastard.

Language, Alfreth. Miss Patterson has entered her domain; the door is open, always, until the first class or Wing visit of the day. In her left hand she carries the kettle she has filled in the Cookery Gov’s place of work; in her right, a brown clutch of prison issue economy teabags.

You know I don’t like language like that in this room.

Sorry, Miss.

Could you make the tea, please, Alfreth?

Of course, Miss. What else would you like me to do today, Miss?

I have to confess: I am desperate to do some work—to do anything to rid my brain of the thought that Dott has paid me a visit, first footed me no less (Happy New Year to you too, cunt!) as the first one over the threshold. I am not a victim. I am not a victim in the way that the women he assaulted are his victims—not even close to the same thing—but I feel violated nonetheless.

Miss Patterson’s over-zealous bladder seems to have righted itself. I keep offering to brew up more tea, in order to make her want to go—even though in my unremembered absence the Staff Ladies toilet on this floor has been repaired and a quick trip to drop her knickers won’t give us half as much time to talk as we require. But every second counts. I wanted a run-up. Man need a run-up: to Fridays. Friday is the day F Wing visits the Library. Puppydog Wing. Therefore, maybe Dott. As the morning progresses I realise that I both do and don’t want to see him. Choice isn’t mine to make, anyway. He doesn’t arrive.