I wait for another word—another insult. Finally I say, You can use me to brew up again. We’ve got no one coming.
Brew up again, Kate instructs me with a nod of the head.
I aim to please. Do I say this or only think of saying it? Not sure. There are bare things I think I say, sometimes, and I never do. Bare things I never say but imagine otherwise. I wish I could be a doctor, to look at my own head.
Miss Thistle? You’ve got power.
I’m not sure I would go that far, Billy, she replies.
I’m not like some of the other lads in this nick, I’ve come to realise. Some of the other lads reach their most eloquent and dramatic turns of phrase at the point of maximum vulnerability: when their backs are against the wall. Me, I’m different. In the possession of price-raised information, I’ve realised, I’m a veritable Camus or Sartre. I know my shit. So I say:
I think you are, Miss. Either Governor Glazer or Governor Manners has okayed you to be in sole charge of a perpetrator of a violent crime. I stabbed-
I know. You stabbed someone in the arm.
So what’s the arrangement? I want to know.
I’m not sure I follow you, Billy, Kate replies—and I like her style.
What do I get for helping you out? I ask slowly.
What do you think I can give you?
My pace is calm; my tone pure buttermilk and whipped yoghurt. Temperament-wise, I’m a fucking dessert. I want to be bruleed. Toasted in brandy, innit.
A meeting with Dott, I reply.
Swiftly on the defensive, Kate informs me she’s not certain she can swing that one around. I tell her she can, if she wants to. It’s my only hope.
I’ll see what I can do, she tells me after a longish pause. Would this do in the meantime? A visit.
To where?
To his cell in the Seg. His TV magazine.
Has he ordered one? I ask.
Yes. It would normally go to his cell on the Puppydog Wing—he paid in advance for the month—but it’s worth a Try. Why are you smiling?’
I like it, I confess. Like rubbing salt in the wound.
I don’t follow, Billy.
We’ll be giving him a TV mag in a place where he’s explicitly forbidden to watch TV, I tell her. It’s beautiful.
It’s not quite what I had in mind.
I’m still smiling. But then again, Miss, I say, you don’t have my mind.
Which point, the scary thing happens. Kate Thistle responds with:
No. No, I don’t. Not yet.
Three.
What was that nonsense I heard about you slapping your bird? I am asked.
His name is Screw Oates. I have mentioned him before but the names don’t really matter. We’re deaf to prison officers’ names, half the time. (Maybe you are as well.) They’re not deaf to ours but we’re deaf to theirs. And it’s not just the yoots who are immune to the charms of screws’ monikers. In the past I have overheard the occasional conversation between members of the Education Department, in which one will admit to another that he or she doesn’t know the name of the screw on the landing corridor with them. Consider that. You’re in a room of convicted killers, say, and your guard’s your best shot if something kicks off. And you don’t even possess the civil and self-preservative courtesy of learning the cunt’s name.
Anyway. Oates is my unofficial guide around the Dellacotte grounds as I hump my day-glo sack of reading goodies to the wankers and the nice guys. Don’t usually qualify for a chaperone, but after the slapping incident, they’re covering their arses so thickly it looks like pork rind.
She stole my money, sir, I reply accurately.
How much?
We’ve reached the Segregation Unit. It’s ugly how the feelings from such a recent encounter with the god-forsaken place rear up in me now.
Eighteen grand, sir.
Oates turns to me as he uses the first of his two keys to get us in there, out of the murmuring rain.
Eighteen grand. He even whistles.
Yes, Gov.
I would’ve killed her, Alfreth. Get in there. Do what you need to do.
Thank you, Gov.
My mind is pinching back together every thumbnail-sized scrap of memory that it can find—about the bee-sting day, back then. I want to call Julie tonight to tell her that she has wasted her money buying me books about mass hysteria and that bait: because she hasn’t. She’s wasted my fucking peas. My paper, my sheets, my work, fuck’s sake allow it. We’ll be talking again, she and I, but not about this subject specifically.
The hall still smells the same, not surprisingly: rinsed rat and garage oil and badly spent hope. Screw Oates introduces me. I think his name is Goodman, the one who nods his head in the little office.
Don’t worry, he tells me, I haven’t forgotten your ugly mug yet.
And then it’s me, with my sack. Half of the contents have already been distributed; it’s as light as mild push-ups in the Gym. I approach Dott’s cell. Some people disagree about the existence of déjà vu, but if you are in my head at this moment there is no doubt the cunt exists. It’s as though I’m approaching the cell on Puppydog Wing for the first time again.
Have you come back to see me, Billy Boy? Dott shouts.
I say nothing. I push his TV guide under the door.
How thoughtful! he shouts once more—and I turn my back. There are eyes and cameras on my every move and I can’t afford to waste this chance. I head back to the office and announce that I’m ready for D Wing.
Hours later, and I’m losing a game of pool with Shelley—my heart isn’t in it—and Ostrich is linking a yoot name of Gardener—I’m not listening—and nothing is making sense—the food in my belly like a tank of piranhas—and I’m wondering if I’ll manage to sleep tonight—and I suddenly feel queasy.
I run for the sink in my open cell. I pass the parcel. Head jerking to either side, worst cocaine headache I’ve ever had and I ain’t touched the shit, and I’m coughing and spluttering like the village idiot pisshead, shaking. The mirror shows me a frightening picture. I look dead. Gripping the side of the basin, I close my eyes. The image is still there, burned on like illegal pirate copies on a CD. Can’t get rid of the fucker.
Are you there, Dott? I ask in my head.
When he answers I’m always there, Billy Boy I fall down.
Because it’s not possible, innit? Mind control. Messaging. So how do I explain the fact that I hear his ghastly voice? One of the female screws is present. Her name is Blake, I think; I can hardly hear her talking as she asks me if I’m all right and if I need a visit from Health Care. All I want to do is sit still on my bed, with my hands warmly holding my head, not thinking. And the last bit’s the important bit: not thinking.
I explain that I don’t need Health Care and make it clear that I’ve just had some bad food. (That so-called lasagne was rough, to be honest.) Look of relief on Screw Blake’s face; the relaxing. She knows it will come to nothing more than I threw up prison food; she won’t have to write it up. It happens every day, with the mud and pond-life we’re expected to digest.
Couple of minutes later, here’s Ostrich. Wogwun? he asks.
I’m all right, fam, I lie. I had the lasagne. Taste like upholstery, blood.
Understandably and understandingly he nods his head.
Man need a favour, cuz, he says. Man just lose at draughts innit.
I copy his gesticulation. How much you need? I ask him.
Two burn.
On the windowsill.
Safe? You sure as rain’ll fall, blood?
Take it all, I answer (recklessly in hindsight—he might have taken me up on the invitation). His eyes are all jumpy and sad. I know why. It’s nothing to do with me, swear down. He’s been sipping the blackadder hooch that Woodward on the threes has been brewing behind his radiator. Lethal gear. You don’t so much get drunk as go straight from a position of sobriety to one of partial liver failure and temporary brain damage. It cuts out your days.