Ross Raisin - Gods Own Country

♦

I wasn’t mighty popular after I started the attacks. The times between segregation I got beaten regular, and all over the shop now — in my cell, in the showers, in association. The officers let them at it mostly. They were just biding for their next chance to send me to segregation, and course I gave them plenty. They started treading careful around me, like I was a bullock might charge them any moment. It couldn’t go on like that for always, though. The warden got wind before long. He said I was a danger to myself and to others and I had to go on the Rule, which meant I was off to the Vulnerable Prisoner Unit with the perverts.

Life was fair different in there. I was still Ripper and Pete, but when these lot said my name they didn’t spit or snarl it, they spoke it high and mighty, like a title. They liked me in there, because I was one of them. It was mostly perverts, together with crammocky old fellers who’d been inside half their lives, and a few barmpots who’d missed the bus to the mental hospital and ended up left in the VPU, the prison sump-pit. These were the ones most likely for a battering, or a breeding, by the other prisoners out on the wing.

No matter they liked me, I was never thick with any of them. Most were either quiet and skulking, or they were flibbery-gibbets yammering in your ear about what they’d done, what the others had done, what they were going to do — they never gave you any peace. They were better than the other lot, mind. And I got to understand there wasn’t nothing too different about me, most of these had done worse — raped a female, or a sprog. One had bred his own sister. What I’d done wasn’t much compared to that, owing as my luck had run out at the last moment.

I didn’t tell them that at my treatment, though. I just sat, pretending to listen while they put ticks on my parole card. I should’ve been grateful, the perverts told me, getting the treatment, for you didn’t always get it if you were in less than six or seven years, and once you’d bided out the treatment your parole card would be blistering red ticks. It was proper calf-headed. There were classes on Victim Empathy and umpteen short films of lads and lasses copping together in supermarkets and pubs and going on dates in fancy restaurants, feeding each other prawns out their fingers. Bugger knows what they wanted us to learn. Did they want all us perverts lining up in supermarket aisles waiting to meet a female? Then there were classes with Richard and Luke, all these diagrams of Relapse Prevention Strategies and Offence Cycles, and how high-risk situations can be avoided. The teachers had to be men, course, else we’d have paid no attention — if it’d been females we’d have been too busy dripping gozzle on us desks and thinking what we’d do to her to listen what she was saying. Not that there was a champion amount of listening going on anyhow. Most the lesson, the perverts at the back the class were studying each other’s picture stores, doing swaps.

That was when I got the picture. Stole it when one of them was looking otherways and hid it under my writing pad. It was a fair piece of luck, because most the time the perverts hoarded their pictures sharp-eyed as a Scotsman burying brass. She was likely the prize of his collection and all, the little smile on her like she’d just been sent out the classroom, all she did was she drew a cat in her textbook, that’s hardly a crime is it? Bugger knows where he got hold of a picture like that, but it was his own fault, not being careful enough.

I stayed in the VPU the rest my sentence in the Category B, until I got enough red ticks and the transfer order came to move me to the open prison. That was when they fixed me with my parole officer. Mawkish sod, he was like the dad some ways, wouldn’t say boo to a goose. I could imagine it, the pair of them trying to shoo the goose in the coop, fussing, the goose parked up, not moving. Round your side a little, that’s it, that’s it, not too fast, don’t want to frighten her. Now m’lady, bedtime I think, come on now, let’s not have a scene. This way, this way — well, can you believe it? It would seem the lady’s not for moving.

He’s got me a place in a hostel, some town nearby, he’ll keep calling in on me, he says. He’s been coming to the prison most days now that I’m near the end my stretch, I’ve hardly had any peace from him, though there’s been other things to make up for it. I’ve been on two outside visits a week since I got here. Never mind I’ve had to spend them with him, sat in tea shops listening to him talk on about bank accounts, I’ve still been able to view out the window behind him at all the females walking past outside.

♦

She’s staring at me, looking right into me. I suppose you won’t be needing me any more, will you? A whole world of other girls out there. I smile — she’s just teasing with me, I know, and I tell her she’s wrong, she’s got it arse-uppards. She’s a mentalist if she thinks I’m letting go of her now. I’m sat on the bed smiling, when there’s a knock on the door. My parole officer. He’s the only one knocks like that.

Yes, I say, folding her back inside Adapting to Freedom .

He steps in and stands in the doorway, a great daft smile on his chops and his hands on his hips.

Fit and ready?

I just rucking know he’s a rambler.

Near as. I haven’t packed yet. Won’t take long, mind.

Good, good. He’s looking round the room, taking it in, as if he’s leaving it himself and wants a good last sight and he doesn’t have to be here next week, coddling some other pervert. He picks up a bag by the doorway and comes to sit on the bed next me, without asking. Then he goes quiet a moment, and I know we’re going to have one of our chats.

How do you feel, Sam? Ready?

Course.

It won’t be easy, you know. Adjusting. Getting back in the swing of things.

I know. We’ve talked about it.

I’m not glibbing — we’ve certain talked about it enough. How it won’t be easy meeting people. How some people might be unwilling at first to accept I’ve changed, they might give me the cold shoulder. I had to laugh when he told me that. Adjust? What does he think it was like before I was locked up? Who does he think I was — Postman Pat?

So, he says, have you thought about your plan of action for tomorrow?

Some.

Well, go on then, tell me your thoughts.

I want to have a walk. I want to see them hills, I say, nodding toward the window.

He lips up a moment, looking out. He’s likely thinking, hmm, a walk, let’s make a checklist — packed lunch, Thermos, Ordnance Survey map, woollies. But all he says is, okay, that’s fine. Should probably wait a few days first, though, get settled in, feet on the ground.

Right.

Now, Sam, I’ve got some dungs for you here, your own possesions, that you gave in at first reception. He sets the bag by my feet. Okay, he taps the bed, I’ll be back in half an hour, drive you to the hostel. He stands up and smiles down at me. See you in a bit.

When he’s gone I walk over to the window for a last look of the hills, and I picture him up going home after work, greeting his wife, and I wonder if he’s as chirrupy as this the whole time. Can he shut away thinking on the scutter portion of his day when he kisses her hello on the cheek, or is there a griming he can’t ever wash off, like a miner, or a fisherman always reeking cod?

The bag’s got my boots in it, and my jacket, soap-smelling and faded now, all the layerings of muck washed away. I put the boots on first, then the jacket, still comfortable after all this time, and I start to pack up my trunklements. There’s not much — toothbrush, a few books, and the picture. I take her out for a moment, then I fold her back inside the booklet and put her in my jacket pocket. And who’s there? Old Dracula, that’s who, dapper as ever, seems he’s escaped the washer. Who’d have thought it? The old team back together. The keyhole blinks as people walk past outside, and I slip him back in the pocket to guard over her. It’s a fair important job, I tell him, she’s all I’ve got, for the moment. Then I sit down on the bed and I wait, Dracula’s head poking out the top the pocket, the sly grin on him, watching, on the lookout.