David Mathew - O My Days

All of us laugh like latrines.

What happened to your ting? Ostrich wants to know.

Carewith shrugs his sloping shoulders. Made a miracle recovery innit. Met me back in me yard an hour later.

But Roper won’t let it go. He called me dumpling, he mutters.

Who does, blood? I want to know.

You’re not listening. This is Carewith again, eager to carry on with his tale, now that he’s obtained an audience.

Okay, blood, says Roper, finally seeing the light. As I may have intimated, he’s a nice yoot and that, but not exactly management material, if you follow my drift. It takes him a while. Now he farts. Loudly.

Ostrich is not best pleased at this turn of events. Frowning, I would expect, in the same way he did when he busted the cranium of that cheese-eater in Canning Town, he now says, How are you gonna do that, man? Respect it, you filthy cunt. He brushes the foul air away from his face.

I can feel things tensing up. And this is in Sosh Time: when everything is supposed to be a gulped breath of freedom. On the surface, at least. Carewith is getting cross at not being able to finish his chicken anecdote; Ostrich is also pissed—and both of them are on at Roper. Not that the boy needs any help. What Roper lacks in intellectual faculties, he makes up with with speed of fist and a bulldog’s aggression. I once heard a yoot name of Welling (long since left the establishment) give someone else a précis of Roper’s talent.

Man, man say, man move from Chelmsford innit, because man love fighting too much. He put it on passionate, cuz. Had a fight with bare man. Make a statement innit. He have a madness with man? Man go down. No more beef. No more street beef. Bang beak. No more shit. Allow it, blood. He pauses his rant. Man, he adds after a couple of seconds, man must have done some stupidity .

So I’m not exactly overly arsed about Roper’s predicament right now. But I don’t want Sosh to be abandoned in a riot of arriving screws. Too much of that I’ve seen in the Cookery class, recently still.

What happens next? I say to Carewith. Anything for an easy life.

It’s later. Couple of days later, and we’re chatting shit, he tells his adoring public, blazing a zoot.

I miss that, man. I miss zoot, says Roper.

My guess is that he’s about to get his head busted open.

But Carewith simply says, Yeah—and says it fondly. Then we get the fucking giggles, right, and we get the munchies. And my ting says, Why don’t we get some chicken? And I’m like, rah, Can’t, babe, innit; spent all my peas on zoot.

Carewith’s whip is off the road, due to some issues concerning no peas to fill up the tank; and the local petrol stations have all become wise to his habit of flashing his Blockbuster Video card from the pumps as a way of attempting to convince them he has the funds to pay—before driving off. They see him coming and they turn off the pumps from the counter. So what’s a poor boy to do? Man uses a selection of kitchen tools to break into the sideboard, where he knows that the neighbour in the yard next door has had his keys stored for the duration of his holiday in the South of France. Carewith’s mum has volunteered to feed the three cats. Carewith and his girlfriend hop into the neighbour’s enhanced whip and head down to the BetterSave to lick some chicken.

Problem is, says Carewith, I’m high on zoot. Man catches me.

He is wrestled to the floor by the shop’s security baboon. Word has gone round the ends and every shop in the area has been shown some grainy CCTV footage about the chicken-licker of old Canning Town. The worst is yet to come. Bruv’s girl, when she’s nabbed, denies even knowing him still. And that is serious betrayal. Until his mum comes home, Carewith does his seven hours in the cell, sweating out the marijuana. Then he’s released on bail (the matter of the stolen car is yet to come) and he takes the bus over to gritty Ilford. Where he finds his ting and batters her blue.

So that’s my madness, Carewith concludes, fondly rolling an indulgent second burn. It’s all about the little becoming the big, innit?

Chicken escalations, says Roper, oddly reading the mood correctly for once—and even nodding his head in what appears to be genuine sympathy. There is a silence. It is as rare as it is uncomfortable. Sosh is nearly over.

It all starts with a chicken, Carewith adds, unable to believe his dark fortune, his hard-done-by-ness.

I wish I had thought of chicken escalations.

So what comes first, the chicken or the egg?

No man ever done bird because of an egg. The chicken comes first.

I’ve heard enough. I have to collect some winnings from Shelley.

Those twenty minutes go quick time, I say, standing up for a stretch.

Kate Wollington knows all about how to keep a man hungry. She’s someone I’d move to on the outside, anyway. In here—in this poom-poom drought—I would sell my yard and give up my savings, for the chance just to wank on her shadow. Not that she’s buff, particularly; but your standards change. You realise how lucky you are that a woman is willing to share floor-space. You get tired of bash. You get tired of late night Channel Five. I don’t know why I’ve been called away from the Library. I’m in the Meetings Room, next to the dentist’s surgery. Dressed head to toe in black, as usual, she enters the room and the screw ups and leaves, with the promise that he’ll be right outside the door. Kate checks that I’m wearing my Redband—as though failure to do so would signify a dramatic descent on the graph of my trustworthiness. She seems appeased and she straightens her skirt as she sits down. Polo-neck sweater.

And how are you today, Alfreth? she asks as she skims her clipboard. There I am, in small typed print: my life, my crime. It’s the only one that I was caught for—that wounding—and it’s in there like punctuation.

What can I say? I’m top of the tree.

Really?

Yeah. Miss, a question, yeah, I add swiftly.

Go on.

I choose my words carefully, and what I say is: Why do we have to carry on with this, Miss? Mean, I’ve given you all I’ve got, innit.

It’s part of your tariff, Alfreth, Miss Wollington informs me.

I know that. But my question is why, Miss?

She shrugs the cute shoulders that slope so definitely that her bra straps keep falling down beneath her top. And I should know: I’ve studied her often enough over the time in her presence. I sense her helplessness.

It’s part of your tariff, she repeats, unable to elaborate.

Now is the time for me to consider that she, in her way, is as trapped as I am. It’s just that the bars have a different colour. No one wants to be here. Not the yoots; not the staff. Not even the ducks, most likely. I’ll ask Ostrich to have a word with the latter to confirm. Dumb thought. But it leads me right back to Dott’s door. Suddenly I get the impression—chilled cold as it is by the conversation that follows—that Dott, with his weird ways and weirder manner, can talk to the animals.

Sensing no possibility of escape, I say: Okay. I’ll ride it.

Any objection to my turning on the tape recorder?

Do I ever?

No. But I thought it a professional courtesy to offer, as ever.

I nod my head. Courtesy acknowledged, I say to Kate. Fire away.

Okay. She reads her notes. She doesn’t glance up. Do you ever think about your past? she asks me with a straight face.

Question knocks the wind from my sail. Swear down we’ve done this bare times.

I say, Nope. I exhale. I want to go back to my pad, I almost add.

Why not? she wants to know.

Ain’t got one innit.

She tries to appeal to my sense of reason but I’m fed up and pissed and I want to get back to my pillow.