First, I texted you back on Cheryl’s phone. You remember that one, Sir? The one where she asked to meet you that very night, at The Wellington Arms? That was me, not her. But less than a minute later, the phone buzzed in my hands with your reply, something about having to be really careful, it was quite a public place.
And I was giggling now, as I replied, insisting we must meet, that I was worried, had something to tell you that I might need to see a doctor about. I remember having to stop myself from laughing when I pressed Send.
Next, I deleted the messages and dropped the phone down the toilet. Now, even if Cheryl and her mates did find it, the thing wouldn’t work. You wouldn’t be able to secretly text her before the meeting in The Wellington. You were most likely going to show up, and she had no idea about it. Quite a scheme, eh? I think even Hamlet would have been proud of me, don’t you, Sir?
It’s a good play, Hamlet, and has often been interpreted in many different ways. It seems to me that the central question — does he fake his madness to get revenge on those who’ve betrayed him? — is almost impossible to answer. Perhaps Shakespeare was trying to say that all revenge is a form of madness, as it can consume our minds if we’re not careful.
I think Dad’s the sanest man I know. Yes, he did a stupid thing and got caught, and now he’s being punished for it. But he’s never talked of revenge — even though I reckon he’d probably want to get that CCTV operator who spent too long looking at young girls getting drunk, rather than catching Dad’s accomplice on the night of the robbery. The police never found any fingerprints or anything, but the fact is that Dad couldn’t have done it on his own. Someone else must have helped him, been inside the warehouse, handing him the boxes of stuff to load into the van, just out of shot of the properly sighted camera. But when the police went through the tapes, Dad was the only person on them. Doesn’t seem very fair, does it, Sir? My dad in prison, and the other man going free because you didn’t do your job properly?
Chances are, Sir, you never made the connection between me and Dad. Judy Harris, I mean, it’s not as if it’s a very uncommon surname, is it? Sort of invisible to you, aren’t I? The swotty kid who complains about the others, tells tales on them; the easy one to ridicule. The plain one, the one that doesn’t wear makeup, giggle at you as you pass by in the corridor. Just invisible old Judy Harris, gives in her work on time, does all the homework, tries her best. Strange how life can turn out, isn’t it, Sir.
Back to my conscience-pricker. Having arranged for you to be in The Wellington, I decided that Mum and Uncle Tony needed a little more culture in their lives. I went to the shopping precinct on the way home, bought myself a copy of the Hamlet DVD, told them both that after tea, I thought it would be a really nice idea if we all sat down and watched it together. Well, of course, Uncle Tony — already a little drunk at this point — raised a few objections, said he didn’t mind watching Mel Gibson stuff, Mad Max and the like, but he was buggered if he was going to sit down and watch a “load of Shakespeare shit all night”. (See, another quotation, that’s two so far; doing right well, aren’t I, Sir?)
Anyway, I made a bit of a fuss, and eventually Mum decided to smooth things over and asked Uncle Tony really nicely if he’d do this one thing. I said it’d make us all feel more like a proper family, and Uncle Tony sort of made a throaty noise, shrugged, and gave way, saying he’d give it half an hour, and if it was bollocks, then he’d leave it.
So, Sir, just after half-seven that night, I put Hamlet on our DVD player. Imagine that — a bit of real culture in our grotty house. Amazing, eh? And then I did what Hamlet does, watched my mother and my uncle real close as the story unravelled...
It didn’t take long, say twenty minutes at the most, and that’s even with all the old language to cope with. Mum and Uncle Tony soon got the gist of it — the betrayal of Hamlet’s father — and began sort of shifting uncomfortably and giving these sideways looks at each other. Honestly, Sir, it worked a treat.
Uncle Tony started coming out with all this stuff about Mel Gibson going “poofy”, and that he was much better in Braveheart and the Lethal Weapon films. I just knew he was begging for an excuse to leave what was becoming more and more embarrassing for him. So at that point I decided to tell him about you, Sir. Not the Cheryl Bassington stuff, or even the way you were so mean to me; no, instead I told him about the other stuff.
Yeah, I know, I lied. But just a white one, really. And Hamlet himself does that, doesn’t he, when he tells poor Ophelia that he doesn’t really love her any more? I told Uncle Tony that when I was in town buying the DVD a strange bloke had come up to me asking me my name and where I lived, and when I told him, he asked me if Tony Watts lived with us. When I said he did, the man told me he wanted to speak to him about “the favour” he’d done my Uncle Tony with the security cameras, and that as far as he was concerned he thought that Tony Watts owed him, big-style, and that he’d be waiting in The Wellington at 8.30 to “sort it all out”.
Well, my Uncle Tony being the sort of bloke he is, you don’t have to try too hard to imagine his reaction. He was well angry, and began swearing and cursing, telling me I should have told him much earlier, asking for a description of you, then grabbing his coat and storming off, slamming the front door behind him so loudly that the walls shook. Mum looked right ashen, turned the DVD off, and told me to get straight upstairs to my room, that she thought I’d caused enough upset for one night. Uncle Tony didn’t come home that night.
That was two weeks ago, and you’ve been off school ever since, haven’t you, Sir? At Thursday morning’s full-school assembly, the Head told us that you’d been attacked the previous night, and were staying away to recover. Two broken ribs and a fractured jaw, the local paper said, with a couple of witnesses saying you’d been beaten up by a Tony Watts (unemployed) in the car park of The Wellington Arms. Police, apparently, are still trying to find a motive, but I’m sure with a little “help” they’ll have a clearer picture of why he did that cruel thing to you.
Uncle Tony’s on remand, as we can’t afford the bail, so he’ll be inside till the court case, which should be really interesting. The police have already interviewed my mum about Uncle Tony, but they haven’t got to me yet. I’m not sure whether to tell them what I know, or to keep quiet about it. I’ll write to Dad and ask him what he thinks I should do.
Our substitute teacher isn’t very good, but she’s told us to finish these assignments and the school will send them to you to mark while you recover. I’m sure that when you read this, Sir, you’ll realize why you were attacked that night, together with how much I know about you that you’d rather other people didn’t.
In conclusion, I say that whether Hamlet was faking his madness is irrelevant. How sane are any of us, anyway? And isn’t the very idea of faking madness a bit bad in the first place? Maybe you should know, Sir, the amount of faking you’ve done in the last few years.
I look forward to receiving my A for this essay. After all, I really did my homework on you.
No Thanks, Please
Declan Burke
Heads turned, half-curious, then full-faced in horror. A man started towards her, one hand out as if reaching to catch a low driven ball, but she walked on, turning up off the river under the arch at Christchurch and on down Patrick Street.
A condom in the gutter with a used teabag inside. A Labrador puppy cocking a leg at its reflection in a puddle. Italian names on car tyres. Each new thing reminded her why she was looking in these places for the first time. Not to avoid the shame she would see mirrored in their eyes or the degradation she might glimpse in some angled shop window. It simply hurt too much to roll her right eye up against the bruising. So she kept her head down and her shoulders hunched, arms loosely folded to cradle her ribs.