Martin Amis - Yellow Dog

Four minutes later Flight 101 dropped a thousand yards at the speed of gravity: thirty-two feet per second per second. The coffin of Royce Traynor leapt from the floor of Pallet 3 and smashed into its ceiling. After a beat it smashed back down again. It landed corner-first on one of the canisters marked HAZMAT. There was an atrocious sneeze of thick pink liquid, then a steadier, seeping flow. After twenty-five minutes the dominant pool of thick pink liquid would begin to fume.

* * *

Joseph Andrews was in his office, upstairs. Two sloping sheets of glass formed an isosceles triangle with the floor. You could see every freckle, every nostril hair … He held a microphone in his hand: buxom, corded, the mike of a bygone crooner. The pause button gave a little click whenever he freed it or engaged it.

‘[ Click. ] I want to tell you me story. Man to man. Let you be the judge. Let you be the judge … [ Click. ] … Gaw, where do I …? Go on then. Go on. [ Click. ]

‘I had such a reputation for enduring pain that when the prison dentist offered me an injection I felt pretty much duty-bound to chin him.

‘So he’ve gone off to see his dentist. And then of course the screws done me in the Strong Cell. Par for the course. Me cheek was out here. When the dentist come back [ click ] with his fucking jaw in a sling [ click ] … Well. They took a right liberty. I was in a straitjacket with me head in a clamp and me mouth wedged open with a sawblade. Ooh and that dentist, he’s give me abscess a right going over. Dear oh dear. They was watching to see if I’d flinch but I never. [ Click. ]

‘[ Click. ] There ain’t a form of punishment meted out in His Majesty’s Prisons that I’ve not took. Bread and water, deprivation of mattress, Refractory Block, PCFO. In the hospital wing they’ve give me the Blinder and the Crapper. They slip it in your coffee. The Blinder ain’t so bad — you just go all legless like. But the Crapper … you can kill a man in a week in that manner. I’ve had the Cat and the Birch. It’s a fallacy that I used to whistle while they was giving me the corporal. But on the thirteenth stroke I used to do a lovely yawn, and he’d come in with a will on the final five. Trying to make you cry out. No chance. The Birch is worst. It’s more uh, detrimental to a man’s dignity, being as how it’s on your arse. I mean you got some man on your shoulders, for the Cat. But it’s just a baby, your arse is.

‘Them’s only the official punishments. They’ve pissed in me tea and flobbed on me grub. For five weeks they’ve kept me in the Box on the Strap Plank: another right liberty. But what it is is: the niggles. Like me mum come up to see me in Durham — a two-day journey in them days — and an hour before she’s due they’ve gone and transferred me to Strangeways! That’s how low they’ll stoop. These are men who live to see other men confined. Like they take away your Association on a technicality — and there’s that little smirk. You see that look on they face, and you know you’ll have to do them. Just a question of when. And then of course they do you. Fact of life. [ Click. ]

‘[ Click. ] I want to tell you me story, man to man. Right or wrong, let you be the judge.

‘Like many a face I was, in me youth, an avid boxer. I won four of me first eleven fights at Bermondsey Baths. Which don’t sound too clever. But I never lost one! In fact they was all knockouts. See, I had an unfortunate tendency to get meself disqualified. Instead of standing there with me hand held high, as victor, while the other bloke got stretchered off, I’d still be kneeling on the canvas and giving him what for. It was a struggle to uh, channel me aggression. In the eleventh fight I’ve left the ref for dead and all. So they banned me. [ Click. ] And Mr Shackleton, the Director of the YBPA, never knew what hit him — I come up on him that nice. [ Click. ] After that decision I had no choice but to turn to a life of crime.

‘Me first trouble with the Law was for possession of an offensive weapon. Not de fensive, oh no. Off ensive. The Old Bill gives you a spin and it’s one of them uh, circular conversations. “Oi. What’s this?” “What’s it look like?” “Why you carrying a knife?” “I always do.” “What for?” “I always carry a knife.” “Yeah but why?” “Because I always do.” Blah blah blah. I was eight. So then the social’s upped and packed me off to Approved School. And then of course I did me Borstal. And even in me boxing days I’ve had a spell or two in Pentonville for Smash and Grab. Smash and Grab: definition of a glass brassière, if you like. This’d be the late Thirties. Then the war come … Now don’t get me wrong. We was patriotic and that. In their struggle against the spectre of Nazism, we wished the armed forces all the luck in the world. But you wasn’t going to be donning togs for the powers-that-be. No chance. [ Click. ] And if a Tommy come your way on a dark night, the slag’d live to regret it. [ Click. ] So in the war years you was either inside or on your toes from the Conscription. In 1944, when I was finishing me three in Wormwood Scrubs, Sir Oswald Mosley, of Blackshirt fame, and his wife, Lady Diana, was interned there. There was a plan on to do him during Exercise, but he come over as a perfectly reasonable sort of bloke and we’ve left him be.

‘Things opened up beautiful after the war, with all the austerity. We was forging ration-books and otherwise like billy-o. Then in the year of your birth I get me first decent thrust — and me first serious bird. Swings and roundabouts. [ Click. Click. ] Funny word that: bird. Comes from birdlime , rhyming with time. Birdlime was the sticky stuff they put on the branches of trees to kill the birds. Sticky fingers, see: thieving. But it’s the birds that cop it, not the branches, so it don’t quite work out. Bird also means “girl”. A richard is a sort, Richard the Third rhyming with bird. [ Click. ] Rhyming-slang: load of bollocks. [ Click. ] But I’m told the word bird comes from bride , originally. Anyway.

‘It was the Airport Job. Heath Row — two words — it was in them days. Also known as the Protective Assurance Robbery. An overnight cargo of diamonds plus £160,000 in hard cash — millions in today’s money. The guards was supposed to be drugged: barbitone in they coffee. But when I give one a nudge [ click ] with me fucking iron bar [ click ] the others have jumped up and steamed in. They was Ghost Squad! Well, I don’t know, they must have expected schoolboys. They hadn’t reckoned on me, Ginger, Dodger, Gimlet, Whippo, Chick and Yocker, and we did them something gruesome. When we come out the coppers is there mob-handed and we’ve had another almighty mill. I reckoned I was well away. I’ve slipped under a police van and clung on to the exhaust. You know: first traffic-light and I’d be away. But they’ve only put the sirens on and roared off to Battersea nick — fifteen mile away. By then me chest and forearms was welded to the pipe. They had to cut me free before they banged me up, and I still bear them scars. One of the Ghost Squad boys was on the critical list, and offing a copper was a topping offence in them days. I even got me mum to send him a bunch of grapes — to a copper. But that’s one of them uh [ click ] them uh [ click ] them strange paradoxes you’ve stuck youself with when you gone and played the game I’ve played.

‘I served every hour of me fourteen. In them days, if you was flogged, you never lost no remission for subsequent misdemeanours. So me first week in Winson Green I thought: let’s do the Governor, and get the Cat. I done the Governor: spun the legs out from under him in the vegetable garden and come down on his face with me shovel. The screws’ve give me a right sticking — win some, lose some — but when me flogging come up, there’s questions from the Home Secretary in the House of Commons! And God stone me if they don’t go chucko. I’ve had some black hours on the in, but nothing compares to that morning when they’ve gone and cancelled me Cat. I had so many run-ins, thereafter, they was always trying to have me declared mental!