David Mathew: O My Days

Come on then, Alfreth. I’ll bust you open. I’ll show you what time it is.

Fat chance, I tell him while I’m chalking my cue.

I start the game with Shelley, knowing that he knows nothing of where his booty—should I win—will be headed; and caring little more either. Roller and Meaney are still down block, but the screws in question, the rumour in the wind has it blown, are coming back on Monday. I know what I saw. Now I need to know why I saw it. First off, I have a game of pool to win. I need to know.

Boxing mags are forbidden, but God knows why. Miss Patterson won’t tell me and neither will anyone else. Maybe I should drop the question on Miss Thistle. I can explain that they’ll expand my learning pathway and that no one ever became the world heavyweight champion by scanning a piece of paper. The works of principle-level, high-security Man Jail prisoners are also forbidden, but those of lesser-known criminals are hunky-dory. What up? I’m doing my rounds in the rain, as per the norm. Papa Alpha-ing from one warm Wing to the next with my invisible chaperone and a trail-blaze known only to a swarm of rotating cameras. I’m doing my job, rudeboy.

Then I get to the Puppydog Wing. I’m admitted in. I enter the Main Office and chat with some guy called Walsh, who wears the pips on his shoulder of a Senior Officer, and who informs me that I’m late and that the Puppydogs will one day have their way. I’ve done nothing wrong. So I tell the O.G.—the old guy—I inform that old bastard peculiar—that it’s none of my responsibility as to when I’m freed from the Library to distribute. It’s obvious. I fear a decent twisting-up after that, but the cunt is just busting chuckles. I feel like a total cheese. Want to bend him over.

Can I get on, sir? I ask.

Hold your horses, son. You know the drill. What you got?

I go through the inventory of what and for whom.

That’s quite a lot, Walsh acknowledges. You’d better get wriggling. But before you go, Alfreth.

Internally I give a sigh. I’m waiting for the so-called joke he always tells. It makes him smile; it gives him something to think about all morning, no doubt. But hey. It’s all part of my sentence. It’s probably on my tariff sheet: along with all the training courses that I have had to go on—the Better Father courses (as far as I know, I’m a good enough father), the Being Assertive courses (I’m assertive enough, rudeboy, I’ve got an off-switch, sure, but I know when to get loud and deep when the time is right), and the Money Management courses (I’ve got eighty-five grand in the bank, cuz, for when I’m on the out; I’ve got bare peas and I don’t need any advice about money management)—I’m sure it’s written in small print somewhere that I have to take madness from screws.

Is it? I give him grudgingly.

How is Treat lifeing you? he asks again, one more time, thinking he’s the belle of the ball, no doubt. But as usual, I’m ready for it. Been here for bare time, right, and it’s easy as pie now.

I’m not a lifer, I answer.

I ignore the reference to Screw Treat. A more mis-nomered piece of skin-waste I’ve never seen still or had the disadvantage to engage in conversation.

Allow it, sir, taking the piss, I tell Walsh.

I’ll allow it when you’re dead. Start your rounds.

Sometimes, to be fair, he’s okay, just sarcastic, but this must be his time of the month; he’s a shade more hostile than I’m comfortable with. I sense a sudden wave of anger towards me. I don’t like it. It’s similar to the feeling that I sometimes get when I’m on the out and I’ve had a busy night—jacking cars, maybe—and I’ve wound down with hooch and a few nooses of badly-cut sniff. The sense of guilt I feel when I wake up the next day. Because I know I’ve got my faults, and most of them I can live with; but I’ve never got used to a sense of guilt. I hate it. Especially when I’ve done nothing wrong. Seeing Mum in her dressing-gown and pink slippers, knowing she knows I know she knows that I’ve been up to no good in the small hours, but she doesn’t know what. Knowing she’s waiting for a phone call or a visit from the feds. Knowing she loves me but would rather I moved out. Knowing that her attempts at getting me ready for school are a way of shielding herself from the reality that her son—her only son—is a tearaway tyke and wondering where she went right with her two daughters, who eat their toast in their uniforms and proffer no backchat, and where she went wrong with me.

I hoist up the sack of publications. It’s as heavy as lead and it keeps me fit. Delivering is better than a class at the Gym. Outside Cell 3 on the twos I plonk a copy of New Scientist . I slap the metal flap, either to wake the brother up or to interrupt him doing something I don’t want to see. There is his laminated I.D. card of name, prison number, and the photograph that must be replaced by the screws, within twenty-four hours, in the event of a cuz changing his hairstyle, or shaving off a beard, or getting a tattoo on his scalp. It’s Schyler; I don’t know the yoot. But he’s one of the yoots on Puppydog that are not there because of their sex crimes. It’s something petty like serial robbery but if I scratch my brain cells I can recall something about there being some beef on road with a bruv named Pewter, on B Wing. Schyler’s a Puppy for his own protection.

Still on the twos landing I take the opportunity to peek through the window into the common room. The sight of the common room on the twos always soothes me. Beyond the barred gate and metal door, inside, they’ve got a trio of metre-high cages, each containing a tropical bird of some description: a noisy car crash of colour in an atmosphere of grey and beige. God knows I wouldn’t want to have my pad on this landing, but I like to watch the birds for a few seconds—even to hear them squawk and holler. It probably smells like a zoo in there—and I hate that smell—but I like seeing the birds move from perch to perch, wishing that something equivalent could be introduced to some of the other Wings. Or at least mine. The cages are cleaned out and the birds are looked after by the prisoners. I wouldn’t want that responsibility, but it would be nice to have birds around. I lobbied the Governor once for such a privilege—before I understood that he doesn’t give a fuck about what I want and that I should silence my pen. I’m nearly at the stairs, about to ascend, when I hear:

Hey, Library!

Shamefully I take my time—it’s a rare and gravy moment of power; I’m walking, they’re banged up—but I go to the cell that has called out to me. Open the flap and say, Wogwun, cuz.

You finished on the twos?

Yeah, bruv.

Where’s me TV guide innit?

Not in me sack, rudeboy.

Fuck that. I paid innit, he protests, reasonably enough.

I don’t know what to say, man; I’m just the paperboy. Make a complaint, is all I can think of to advise him—in the sense that it’s what I would do in a similar situation.

Elevate the motherfucker innit, I add.

Yeah, right, he says, turns his back on me and returns to his bed.

Sorry, man, I tell him. I’ll ask when I get back.

Safe, Library.

I close the flap.

As I move up the stairs to the threes my heart starts beating a little bit faster. The new boy, Dott, is on the threes, and I have something to push under his cell door. It occurs to me to wonder how he’s placed his order so fast but it’s on my list and I will honour my duty to dispatch. I take a good hard look at Dott’s photograph: at the mugshot of Ronald Dott. He’s got the sort of baby face that you have to learn to respect—even to fear. You get to our age with no wrinkles, no lines, it’s not down to genetics. It’s down to you don’t give a fuck. Nothing’s scarred you, blood. Nothing’s guilted you out. You’re capable of anything. Bust into the equation the fact that man’s been convicted of raping fourteen women and mutilating half of the same, and you’re looking at one deep rudeboy. I bang on his flap. I open it up.