Can I ask you something, Miss?
Course you can, Billy—long as you’re brewing up at the same time. Kate smiles, but she is serious about another cup of tea.
I don’t know anyone who can drink tea like Kate and Angela. I struggle to keep up.
How much longer you got?
To do what?
Be here.
The kettle remains half full from the last round of drinks so I simply flick the kettle and settle down on Angela’s twirl around chair.
I mean, you say you’re writing about prison language.
I am writing about prison language, Kate corrects me.
But you won’t be allowed to stay here forever, Miss, will you?
I don’t want to, thanks!
So what’s your cut off point?
My thesis should be ten thousand words long, or thereabouts, she tells me. I think I’ve got material enough for about eight.
I’m surprisingly touched and proud. So I’ve really been of use to you?
Without question, Billy. You’ll never know how much.
Will you put me in the Acknowledgements?
If I’m allowed to.
Thanks.
But what about the other two thousand words?
Kate shrugs. If I don’t find them here, Billy, I’ll either make it all up—or I’ll use what I know of the Hola Ettaluun.’ She laughs. Who’ll check?
Glad to know you take your studies seriously. Here’s your tea.
Ta. But I do take them seriously, Billy. It’s just that I’m more interested in the project you’re involved in than dissecting the difference between Allow it and Respect me. Do you see what I mean? she asks.
Suppose I do. Allow it. My stab at a silly little joke.
Kate doesn’t answer; deep in thought, she stares into her hot drink. I don’t know what to say next, but I know it can’t be long before Angela returns from her mission.
Kate spares me the embarrassment of further silence. Not looking up from her inspection of the cup’s contents, she says: It was more like a world than a township, for the people who lived there in the desert. Some of them—I’ve never told you this before—some of them treated me with hostility and suspicion. For them it was hard to believe there were other places to live.
Fact is she has mentioned this before; I don’t contradict her. I have spoken enough—I’m pleased she’s taking a turn.
A world before ours, perhaps, Billy. What do you think?
I can’t answer her question; I ask one of my own. What about Dott saying I was dead before he made me with the rose?
That’s what I’m getting at, she says. You were potentia. Dott needed to find you to help himself get back there—even if it’s a state of mind.
But wait a minute, Kate. The desert’s a real place. You were there!
She nods her head. And there alive and well. Can I say truly that’s the same as everyone I met? Everyone who spoke to me? Who can tell how many others are dreaming of existence, there, while they go about their everyday chores? It’s something I didn’t think to look into.
Waiting to be born, you mean? I ask.
Yes. Somewhere in this world or another.
You’re creeping me out, Kate!
Only now? She smirks.
No. Not only now. But including now. It sounds like Hell.
Placing down her half-finished cup of tea, Kate is so good as to look at me again as we talk. While I won’t say the expression is unfriendly, I can’t claim there’s a good deal of warmth there either.
You’re being too literal, Billy. There’s no Hell. Grow up! The Oasis is half wood and half memory, I think. Half water and half notion.
That’s a lot of halves, I remark.
She is not in a punning mood. You may be right.
Kate, what’s wrong? I venture. You’re in a peculiar mood.
She shakes her head. Something came to me last night, she says. Something I’ve thought about before but haven’t managed to articulate, even to myself. I wonder how many other Dotts there are running around.
God, I hope not!
But there must be others, she answers me excitedly. Surely we can bank on that. It can’t be only our Ronald Dott. Others must have got out.
Others moving their way backwards?
Perhaps. No, let’s be positive. Undoubtedly. Without doubt. It’s just that most of them don’t spend nearly so long being a nomad, country to country, trying to find an equivalent of you. They live with their lot.’
With disappointment? I say.
Yes—Like the rest of us.
Ten.
Starved of attention, in addition to being starved of food that my system can’t keep down long enough for it to do me any good, I am all but braying at the moon in the early hours of Friday morning. It’s all I can do not to hit the night belclass="underline" at one point I suffer what experience tells me is a mutually- complementary epileptic fit and asthma attack. In the dark I roll a burn; the smoke hits my chest like a harsh rugby tackle, if not worse: I can feel where the three yoots on the ship, the other night, pounded me, kicked me ragged. It’s all real, I tell myself. Even the bits in my head—they’re real. Nearly thirty minutes pass, the pains sparking over my body, and with me using my newfound powers of communication, however base and unreliable, before I welcome with my mind’s eye the news that Dott, at this moment, right now, is being bent over and twisted up by a couple of screws, batons drawn. There is no show to watch. I cannot see the fight. I cannot view the storming onset. And I have no idea what’s prompted it. But Dott is getting fucked up good, blood. He has said or done something bad, something bad. How can I sleep after that? Still my breathing regularises once more—very slowly, but it does—and I can sense the bags under my eyes darkening slightly. So tired. No snoozing! I chide myself. At this early hour the siren the ambulance wears like a flashy gown is all but certainly not required. Up here in the hills, how much traffic’s there gonna be in the dead of night? The stretched klaxon noises lap at the edge of my consciousness for a few seconds, before I pull myself back from the grip of a brief wee-hours nap. I hear the vehicle get closer—there it is! Midnight Rambler sheep scamper out of its way! Night birds witness the white and yellow, mechanised beast with head-turning disdain. It arrives at the front gates. The siren is doused. Me, I’m getting cock-heavy ready. Why is this? Have I developed some vile kink for cars? Inside these walls I’ve heard worse: the Puppydog with his erection in the soapsuds tray of the industrial washer in the Laundry; the yoot soulfully knocking one out in the exercise yard on C Wing, watching the ducks. But no: what I’ve got here is the thrill of the chase, it’s clear as. Dott has managed to get the shit kicked out of himself. He’ll be going to hospital.
How do I follow you? I ask him—then again, six, eight, ten times.
A spy is no bloody use without senses. I get out of bed. From my window, rolling my eyeballs as far right in their sockets as they’ll go, I can make out maybe the first ten centimetres of the offside front bumper of the ambulance. It’s parked at a rakish angle to the mesh surrounding the Puppydog Wing exercise yard. Stay banged up long enough with someone, or in my case—as I never want to share a cell—keep your next-door for long enough, and you start to come alive to one another’s rhythms. Like women prisoners, coming on together—beginning their menstrual cycles within a day of each other. Jarvis knows, I believe, I’m already awake, but he hisses and calls my name just to be sure .
Are you listening?
Wogwun, bruv, I call back.
The dialogue won’t be allowed to continue for long; nor do I want it to. But I’m thinking—Jarvis might be of some use to me at this point.
You watching the show, blood?
Allow it. What you see?