My thoughts return to Dott. I have nowhere to go to escape from them.
Bending the rules slightly, Ostrich takes a seat on the bed next to me. He’s supposed to sit on the plastic chair or on the dressing table. Not speaking dick—not speaking a single word—he uses my papers and my burn to roll one up. He licks it closed with the finesse and the frown of a true friend—or at least of someone who wants to be.
Burn, he explains unnecessarily. We go twos, he offers—equally as unnecessarily.
There are tears—no, not tears, but the stings of tears en route—in my eyes as I watch him flare the cigarette and exhale against my poster of J Lo.
I nod my head and accept. I follow the blood’s lead. What be going on? he asks.
Complicated.
Man nods his head and rinses his mouth with a yawn that he loop-spits into my sullied and browning basin. Why me? I have time to argue with myself. All I done ain’t no one’s business. But I suppose it is. Everyone’s business is some cunt’s business. Or it’s not business. We smoke our burn. Sosh time is coming to an end. Ostrich knows it although he doesn’t wear a watch—and I fucking know it because I can feel it. Because you learn it. Or because you learn to feel it. Blood times it perfectly. Saying this:
We trade, yeah? You win pool, man spill his bake beans. Now it the other way round: you offer me burn. No question. Man asking why. So man tinking, how can man help man out in return? No money. Shirt on man back? Allow it that noise. Fuck that noise. Man can creep man some rumour.
Some rumour, I repeat.
Allow it.
I’m nodding my head. Be my go-ahead guest, blood, I tell him.
And I repeat: coming back from the Seg is like returning from a foreign country. I feel like I’ve been stalled at Customs for half a week. I’m about to feel more so.
You were away, yeah, man talk about Dott and his control over time.
Somewhat jealously I agree with this. It’s part of what I’ve discussed with Kate Thistle.
There’s no such thing, I state staunchly. It’s a bit like feeling that Kate is having an affair: I wanted it to be between her and me.
Allow it. Man’s dramatically cut down on man’s reality intake, blood.
That’s one way of putting it, I tell Ostrich. What do you mean, brere?
He can mess with mandem’s head. He can take away some time.
So the secret’s out—even if it’s a bitter pill of a secret and one that I remain surprised with myself that I want to keep to myself. Then Ostrich snuffs out the burn in my toothmug; he straightens his back—it goes click—and summons up a summary of sorts. He’s a road man still, even inside the walls: a dreamer, a disbeliever—so while his road vocabulary is always fresh, up-to-date, he is about to bring to bear a collection of words to explain a phenomenon that we’re all not used to. It causes him a great deal of effort (‘Sosh Time over!’ someone shouts) and he knows he has only a few seconds.
Back to your cell, mate, Screw Blake announces from my door.
Yes, Miss, Ostrich replies. At the door jamb he turns and says: A time-vampire, blood. Suck out your time. He doesn’t wait for a reaction.
Allow it, I call back, suddenly absurdly grateful—a complete change of my emotions—to have a confidante. I’m about to find out, cuz. No. Not just a confidante: a witness before the act. Ostrich is my safety shot, I realise; my alibi, almost. And I need to tell him quickly.
What, man? he shouts when I can no longer see him from my bed.
Cookery Class back on for tomorrow! Dott’s on the Labour List!
And so am I.
Four.
They recruit you to do bare dirt for them, man! Then they spray you up with nine em-em! Shit’s not right, blood!
But a contrary contention is swiftly offered. Ah, says the other, whisking his cake-mix with a furious and a genuine passion, but he took his chance, bruv. Thirty grand is a big change!
Not big enough to get sprayed!
The noise is outlandish, the violent subject of the conversation—usually banned inside the classroom—permitted here in the heat of the Cookery Room only because the two speakers happen to be reflecting on the implications of a film seen last night.
Believe it or not, the two speakers are Roller and Meaney. The Cookery Class is packed full. This is a test. Every one of the ten cookers is being used—oven roaring, hotplate blazing—and as I say, the noise is nearly unbearable. But the heat! O my days! The heat! The sweat! And this is a test. Some will pass and some will fail. Not a test of our cooking, of course: it’s a test of our stamina (parched air, building-site din) and it’s a test of our trust. This test is the last chance for a Cookery Class in the future; it’s a chance to get Roller and Meaney together—with Dott. And with me. No pun intended, it’s a pressure cooker. We are the ingredients the scene needs. Ten students means this: at least five (loud) conversations going on at one time. Often more. Some yoots can one-man- band it, innit, holding three or more chats simultaneously—to the backdrop noise of scraping knives and banging pots.
So I’m listening to a review of a film called Mad Filth—
bottled him with a perfume bottle still, blood, yat—
and I’m listening to a preview of an expected sexual liaison—
since I come in here she’s got nice bums and nice plums; I’ll move to her, blood—even though he’s a lifer.
And then I’m listening to so much shit being chatted that I’m busting vex and I want to take the butter knife I’m holding and ram it right into Meaney’s arm. Twist it good; grind it hard. Really put it on the cunt—although he’s done nothing wrong to me.
There’s a high squeak of pain—remarkable that it can half silence the noise; more remarkable yet when I understand it’s my own. Thoughts tumble through my head. I’ve been burnt on my arm. The burn’s too high up. I’ve been bitten by an insect.
I’ve been stung by a bee.
I’ve been stung by a bee.
The notion overwhelms me. Pain exactly at the point where the fuzzy little fucker stung me when I was seven. I shake my arm and let go of the butter knife by mistake. Thank the Lord!—the bastard thing rattles against the saucepan in which I’m cooking bolognese sauce.
Alfreth! the Gov shouts.
If that knife was anywhere else but on a stove right now, I’d be looking at at least two months down block.
Just an insect bite, sir, I call back. Sorry, sir.
But I got you for a second there, didn’t I, Billy Boy?
That’s the voice at the back of my head. Dott’s voice. When I turn to him—Dott—over there in the corner, where he’s been since the start of the class, he is smiling. He mouths it—no noise—but I hear him in my skull.
Nearly made you do it, Billy. Could’ve made you if I’d wanted.
I concentrate on his face; I concentrate on his voice. Though it ripples through me like revulsion I even think of his crimes—or what I know of them. I must get closer, I tell myself, getting stressed. But Dott—Dott can’t hear me. I can’t do it, any more than I can ride a unicycle or cure myopia. I start to take out my frustration on my sauce, compulsively stirring in shake after shake of chilli powder. Dott’s on my mind but he’s not in my head. Left the building; hung up the line. Drops me one lousy communiqué and then dumps me. I remember him shaving his chest in my presence.
What the hell are you doing, Alfreth?