Who is it, Dott? I’m calling now. Who you chatting?
I’m not chatting dick, Billy-Boy. I asked her to visit you.
Is it better or worse to know that Dott has got something going with my mum or with my ting? Frankly, both notions make me feel sick; for a man who wants to know so much about everything that goes on, I am suddenly doing an impression of a guy who prefers to be wilfully ignorant. I am reminded of what Dott is in for.
So much as touch her, Dott, and I swear I’ll make your life not worth living. Are you listening?
Yeah, I’m listening, Billy, he replies. And what makes you think it is?
Is what?
Worth living. Dott does not wait for an answer. That question I asked, he continues immediately. When you were stung by the bee.
How do you know about that? I demand to know.
I was there, Bill. I was the one who poured water on the sting.
It’s not often it happens, but right at this moment I am utterly speechless. I back away from the window slits and lean against the cool metal of the door. But my legs aren’t the equal of the task for long. My knees are drained of juice; as my body goes down, my gorge goes up. I vomit. Not another word passes between me and Dott. I treat myself to another slut wash at the sink. I freshen my breath on a swallow of toothpaste. No amount of rationalisation will chase from my head what Dott has told me.
And it’s summer again; I’m a boy. I have to view the pictures through the veil of pain that struck my body after the bee stung my arm. The pain is the overwhelming sense, and it takes me a few seconds to bite and kick my way back to the real memories of the event. I’m going nuts, I start to think. This can’t be right. There was a man there. There was an application of water to the afflicted area. He was a man who lived alone in one of the ground floor flats. He was in his early twenties then. I was in the communal garden and I remember his face at his flat’s kitchen window. He brought me two blue plastic beakers of chilled water. Through the residual pain I try to remember his face with more clarity, his voice with more clarity. In those pre-prison/pre-regime days it was first names we rolled with. His name was Ronald. And Dott’s first name is also Ronald. Wait. There has to be a sensible explanation. My brain can’t have distorted Dott’s age so badly, can it? That was thirteen years ago. That makes Dott in his mid-thirties at the youngest. But he looks like a twelve year-old.
Screw Wells arrives to escort me to Visits. You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Alfreth, he tells me.
I don’t know how seriously to treat the accusation.
Nine.
How the fuck do you know Ronald Dott, Mum? I demand.
Mumsy appears shocked. Well, that’s a fine way to greet me, she retorts. You’re not too old to be slapped, you know. Ask Julie.
Christ. She told you?
Yes; and I’m glad she did as well, William, Mumsy tells me. What possessed you, young man? I didn’t bring you up like that.
Mum. Have you forgotten where you’re visiting me? I see it in her eyes—that look of disappointment I have inspired on so many occasions—and immediately I regret the sarcasm.
Don’t take that shirty tone with me, young man, Mumsy says.
I am only referred to as young man when disdain is on the menu. It’s her way of refraining from saying something more apt and more bitter.
Sorry.
Now. Who’s this Reginald Dott? she wants to know.
Ronald. You know when I had that bee sting when I was seven or eight? There was a guy downstairs.
You were seven.
Seven then. There was a guy downstairs.
Put water on it. I remember, boy. Why you ask?
What was his name?
It’s not often you hear laughter in the Visits Room. The job of the visitor is to shuffle and deal out some memories for the inmates; but most of them, well-intentioned or not, arrive carrying a card reading: This is what you ain’t got no more, Jack. Lick the plate clean because it’s all you’re getting.
My mother laughs with one of the good, rare ones. It’s genuine. And she adds to it: Billy. Have you any idea how many people have been there?
Like I’m some sort of prick.
A lot, I know. But I thought you might remember something like that.
Mumsy frowns. If you recall, young man, I was more worried at the time about your eyesight, and how you might need spectacles.
Spectacles?
The problem was, I couldn’t get good enough evidence of how you saw the whiteboard at school.
I was never there. I know, Mum, I’m sorry.
My point exactly, she adds—not without a shirtiness of her own, I might say. She knows the best way to make me feel worse about myself and my surroundings is to ignore an apology—especially one that’s been repeated to the nth degree.
Cooling my temper, I ask: Could it have been Ronald?
She waits for a second or two. It could have. Relieved by the appearance of a quiz, her favourite, her tone is softening. She seems to shuffle her own hands. She strokes her own hair. What up?
But was it? I push.
Her appearance is anguished. I don’t know, baby boy! she tells me in response.
I nod my head. I breathe out loud for a few seconds. What’s the name at the bottom of the letter you’ve been asked to bring here today? I ask.
The sentence takes her by surprise. She has yet to produce the article. She is not sure how I know there’s correspondence to be handed over.
It’s unnamed. But it’s not exactly a letter, she adds.
I call out to a screw called Rapattas: Permission to take a letter from Mumsy, Gov!
Ordinarily he’s all right. He can beat me at ping pong and he knows it. This gives him an unworthy and worthless point over me and I enjoy him enjoying it. You learn quickly to give in to the little things, with screws. Sod’s Law that this is one morning when he’s bored (the Visits Room is very quiet) and/or he has been asked to keep an extra-special eye on the visitors of anyone currently in the Segregation Unit. Usually calm and collected, this morning Rapattas wants to know the colour of your tears, your stools, and everything else in between, so he approaches like a polar bear preying on quarry. Holding out his right arm, he wants to know what I want to read.
Me first, he says pedantically—and Mumsy, good as gold, hands the squidgy dollop of dough the sheets of paper she has produced from her bag.
I would like to point out to the Governor that there are members of staff who would do worse than to visit an optician’s office or the diagnosis studio of a first class teacher of dyslexics. Screw browses the writing as though it’s Finnegans Wake. The anticipation as he studies is like a toothache. What has Dott written? I want to go back to my cell to read it.
Pardon me, Rapattas says to my mum, but what’s this?
A letter, I’m about to say.
It’s a work of fiction, my mum interrupts. Rapattas accepts the information with a nod of the head. A work of fiction? The screw’s brow is furrowed and twitching. I’m about to find out why but for the moment I am ignorant. Mum adds: It’s from his sister. It’s a story for her GCSE English.
Rapattas nods again. Big-minded literary critic that he obviously is, he replies, She’s got talent. But love stories aren’t really my thing.
A love story? I’m thinking as he hands the two sheets of paper to me. I can remember the first time he held me in his arms, I read quickly.
The handwriting is tidy, tight and discreet. It occurs to me that I have never seen Dott’s own handwriting but since learning that I’m to receive the message I’ve imagined the script to be the chaotic cloud formations and heroin scratches of a mid-career mass-market rapist. Yeah. I’ve expected the writing to be a scream. I’ve even expected the writing to look like Dott himself. I’ll come back to that so-called ‘letter’—this Mills and Boon romantic fantasy—in a moment. Why? Because I only glance briefly at it for a couple of seconds and I don’t know the full score. It’s an empty moment. It shouldn’t be, but it is. The thought strikes me once again. Whoever sent what’s been sent knows Mum’s address. How can this not add weight to Dott’s argument?