David Mathew - O My Days

What’s the charge, sir? I ask. It’s the middle of the night.

No charge, says Jarvis. Just come out of your pad.

I’m still thinking twist-up. But any road, I move. Time what? Two-thirty? What choice do I fucking have?

Jarvis says, Piss test.

I can’t help myself. I say, I’m sorry.

And Jones says, You will be fucking sorry, cunt, if you refuse.

I’m not refusing, sir, I say. I’m just confused. It’s the night.

Squat.

I’m horrified. Here? I ask. On the landing?

Just do as you’re told, says Jarvis.

I will, sir, I reply, not knowing where any of this has come from—and confused that the parcel has been delivered to my own door. Done nothing wrong, I keep reminding myself—nothing at all. It’s the early hours and everyone is asleep. Or if not asleep, then at least banged up. It’ll do.

I’ll do it, sir, I say; and I drop to my haunches. No problem.

Jones says, You’d better be fucking certain there’s no problem, cunt.

There’s none, sir. You wanted a piss test.

Say I did.

I’m starting to believe that I’ve offended Jones without knowing it, such is his unregulatedly violent approach to me and my life. Done dick.

Where’s the piss pot? I ask.

Squat.

For the first time I notice that Screw Jones has on the gloves. Open up and say ahh, the cunt gives me. And in he goes. Two fingers. No remorse. It’s happened before, but never in the middle of the night.

A mobile phone? A key of C? What the hell are they looking for? They rummage, right there, until they’re satisfied that I haven’t secreted the Crown Jewels inside my rectum.

And then I say: You done? Are you done? Now it’s my turn, sir. I demand the right to piss in your bottle. Please produce it. And I do mean toot-suite. I want my clear piss on your record. Sir.

You cunt, says Jones.

I’m not doing anything wrong, I inform him. Where’s your bottle, please? My voice is even and don’t-give-a-monkey’s. Please, sir, I add.

Or what, you little shit? Jones asks.

Or tomorrow morning, I tell him, I’ll be requesting the G-11 form. And I’ll fill the fucker in, sir. The one about abuse. The one that will put on the record, quite clearly, that you and Officer Jarvis raped me this evening. Good night, sir. And whatever you’re looking for, I hope you find it elsewhere. Not in me.

You cheese-eater, says Jones, quite obviously rattled. But I close my own door on his words.

I’ve even taken that power away from him.

What you do is, you learn indifference. You learn a new way of dealing with stimulus, and that new way is thought of as indifference. Like talking rah . Like talking yat . Hear the bruvs, for example, talking rap. Sure: they’re animated—as animated as when they’re giving the bullshit about ‘rolling with the nines’—nine millimetre pistols—or ‘mashing poom-poom’—banging skirt—but it’s just a dive, it’s a way, it’s a method. Avoiding time. Means jack. Means zero. I don’t go down that avenue. Got my eyes wide open. Call it a failing if you will, but that’s me. Like me or loathe me.

Half of the bloods spouting about burglary, anyway, are in for rape. Fact as fact can be. Check the papers. Check the records. Check their sperm counts and get ready for the scum to hit the roof. I assure you. I drop one, when he first come in and me too. We arrive together. It’s got to be done for the sake of authenticity. Not that I am personally trying to be a leader or a warrior; but it’s good to have something to call your own, to call your calling card—and that something can be a matter that you know about someone else. Hence my arrangement with Ostrich. Who is watching, by the way, as we queue for our cereals. Who is trying to converse with me, but I’m staying a few lads ahead of him in the line. Whose eyes on my neck are like paper-cuts.

I collect my gruel and stamp back to my pad. I blow my nose in the sink and try my roughage with my plastic spoon. It makes me sick to the gut. There is too much static in my head. You learn indifference. And you learn the feeling of being regarded as indifferent and that every day will be indifferent—o my days!—and it’s like an Indian summer has obliterated a half-year of grey astral slime. Too much has happened too quickly in the last couple of twenty-fours for things to be natural, but it takes a bit longer—and a long chat with Dott—to convince me of the same.

The day passes like a piece of vinyl slowly melting on a dashboard. I pray and play. I watch the afternoon film—some piece of nonsense about evacuees during the Second—and I use up some of my phone privileges on a wasted phone call in time for Valentine’s Day, with Julie. What do you say when you said it all last week—and the week before that—and yada yada? You’ve said it, and saying it again doesn’t mean it gets cancelled from the memory of the one you said it too.

How’s Patrice? I ask Julie.

She’s relieved to have something else to speak about, other than ennui, regimes and the famous Dellacote ducks that strut around from pond to pond inside our compound. She’s heard it all before, after all. The ducks that hardened, so-called career criminals change their stride to avoid.

(The one bruv who ever kicked one of the ducks, about a year ago, was hospitalised within the hour. The ambulance arrived and drove him down the hill to the waiting hamlet. Taking instant umbrage, two yoots from the Bricklaying course saw it happen and it resulted in violence: four stitches to the cuz’s head. You don’t fuck with the ducks. Word went around.)

I go to the swimming pool and I don’t share a single word with Ostrich. We splash with our floats, learning front-crawl; we say nothing.

He wants to. And I know that. Then suddenly it’s time for lunch. It’s dreck in a kebab skin.

How’s Patrice? I ask.

Her back teeth are giving her the arsehole, Julie tells me. She’s had something that felt like it was turning into whooping cough but didn’t.

What are you wearing?

Is that the end of our conversation about our daughter? she asks.

No. But what are you wearing?

Jeans.

What else?

Nothing else, she replies.

Where is she?

Upstairs. With the babysitter. He’s putting her down.

He? I shout.

Screw Trover—one of the weekend brigade—turns to fight me with his eyes. I turn my back on him and cuddle up closer to the phone’s armour.

The fuck you mean he? I demand.

Alfreth! Screw Trover warns.

I lower my voice. Who is he?

She waits, and the gap in the conversation is like the time it takes for a planet to re-form after cosmic detonation, yat.

She says, Bailey.

And who’s Bailey? I persist.

Time like a gulped breath. Release, please!

Julie says, She needed help. She sounds desperate. Your mum thought it was a good idea as well, innit. She needs a father figure, Billy. Someone to look up to ain’t in jail. Someone older.

She’s made an enemy, I answer.

I hang up the phone. Deep down I’m satisfied and aggrieved at the same time, but I am pleased to have my suspicions confirmed. It’s easier.

It’s six o’clock in the p.m. Our meals run like trains on a track. The sticky toffee pudding for a dessert is like brandy. I wait. I clean my mouth and tastebuds with wash. I wait some more. I have heard the story of the fight for first place on the pool table: the one that results in the tip of a pool cue up the nose and destroying a left eye. My approach will be more civilized. The guy wears a patch on the out. Three burn stand before me and knowing a new truth. Seems important. Seems vital.