I’m lying on my bunk, passing time, while Clive sits on the toilet reading a newspaper. The bell rings: free association time. Three skinheads from the G wing turn up, covered in tattoos and scars. One hangs back outside while the other two enter, shutting the door behind them.
One is tall and thin with a scrawny throat, his Adam’s apple the size of a golf ball bobbing up and down; he snarls like a pit bull waiting for his cue. The other’s a hulk: thick, round, neckless, concentrating as he wraps a cloth around his knuckles. Clive peers over the sports section, his pants still around his ankles. The duo give me scowls. I turn away, towards the wall. The sounds begin, bone on bone, then rubber on bone, but I don’t look. Clive doesn’t scream or call for help; instead, he gasps for breath with each blow, beaten down like a muffled drum, and then a dull thud, something hard hits the ground.
I glance over; Clive is lying on the floor in fetal position—his pants now turned inside out trail from his ankles. I cross my arms behind my head and stare up at the elasticated straps on the mattress above. This is perfectly normal, I tell myself. My muscles twitch, my left pectoral throbs like a robin’s chest, and my left leg trembles, my abdominals cramp—my body’s urge to move, to contract, to do anything but lie here as though nothing is happening. I tense and then relax, again and again. A shiver shoots through one limb and then another. Normal rules don’t apply, not here. Look the other way, that’s how it is. On the outside you’re safe, relatively. Here you’re trapped. In the yard, in the canteen, in the showers, accidents happen.
Two months down, another fourteen to go. Choose your battles, it’s every man for himself. I’ve only shared my cell with Clive for the last week anyway. I barely know him. Maybe he deserves it. It’s not for me to get involved.
The muted blows continue. After a heavy kick, a black boot ricochets upwards. Scrawny wobbles, nearly losing balance, but the thuds recommence (though with less frequency) and the heavy coarse breaths become louder. It strikes me just how much the body can absorb, how much a man can take: Clive is not big, maybe 5’ 10 or so, a little overweight. A guy in E wing died last year from a single punch.
How much could I take?
Unable to stand it any longer, I shut my eyes. And there I am, running down the lane on my way home from school: the individual leaves of the berry bushes, the sound of my books bouncing up and down in my rucksack with each stride, the sky overcast as I scamper back before the rain. I kick a stone into the bush, on a route I’ve made countless times. I’ve kicked a thousand stones along this path—and yet I haven’t recalled it until now.
The shuddering thump of a kick to Clive’s skull brings me back. The attack continues, the heavy breaths turn to panting. Like hailstones, the punches and kicks beat down, but just when I think it will never end, they stop.
Clive seems no more a man than a snorting mound of flesh on concrete. A strange noise like that of a straw sucking the last drops of milkshake echoes off the walls. Unable to lie still any longer, I sit up. The intruders’ snow-white faces are now beetroot red; Stout leans forward holding his knees to catch his breath, satisfied. Scrawny admires his handiwork.
The bell sounds: it’s yard time, sixty minutes in the air. I stand up.
I glance at the hands of Scrawny, his bony knuckles smeared red. I make my way towards the door and turn sideways to squeeze past him. Pulling it open, I half expect a blow from behind. A hand taps my shoulder, I turn around, Scrawny puts his finger to his lips and whispers “shh.”
Over the balcony, the whole wing: everything is white—the bars, the walls, the ground—but this is no heaven. I make my way to the yard.
A breeze blows through my cotton shirt. My skin tingles. The sun hangs alone in a bare and cloudless sky. It’s the kind of day I loved as a kid, jumping on my bike and cycling for miles on end, to new places each day. It’s different now. I look for signs of an outside world above twenty-foot brick walls topped with barbed wire. Arms rise towards the sky, a foil bubble of helium floats over the yard, higher and higher. It causes quite a commotion, bunches of convicts looking up like children. Some laugh; others watch in silence. I try my best to memorise it in detail.
And then it’s gone.
I ignore the walkers around me. Like zombies they shuffle along with no destination, lethargic, languid; their pasty sullen skin and gaunt faces repulse me. Do I look as bad as they do? In a way, I hope so.
At least it’s not raining. You’re not allowed out when it is. But even when it isn’t you only have an hour, so take the chance and get some air. When I get out, I’ll never waste time staying indoors.
When it’s chucking down at yard time, we stay in the hall and gaze out through the Perspex into the yard, or sit around and listen to the sound of rain pounding the skylights above. With so much time and so little to do, things come back. Yesterday, as it poured, I stood in the doorway of a place I stayed in Bolivia, the rain thumping down on the corrugated, iron roof, smoking a cigarette and watching beyond the lush green hills a smouldering volcano in the distance. Was that really fifteen years ago?
Time in this place flows like cement. As you think about your decisions and those you let down, counting each second till you meet them again. Each day is a lifetime spent staring at flecks of peeling paint on the wall, a lifetime of screams and shouts from other cells, a lifetime of compulsive paranoia. Besides the visits, there’s not much to look forward to. Food is plopped and splattered the same as shit in this place.
I’ve not been in long, but already the stench of prison is on my skin, a mix of piss, sweat, and boiled cabbage. Inside, the air is charged. Some of the guys in here are actually mad, but others put it on. They spend so much time acting crazy, it’d be impossible for them to act any other way.
Collins approaches. “Fucking animals,” he mutters under his breath as he glances at a group standing in one corner, like school children in a playground. But here there’s no science after lunch and no home time at 15:30. Clive could testify to that.
My stomach churns, my head is dizzy. What will I find when I get back? Gulping deep breaths, trying to slow it all down. And it’s only Monday.
And now it’s time to go back.
My legs feel weak; meekly I climb the steel staircase. I pray Clive’s okay, whether for his sake or mine.
I push open the iron door. Clive’s alone, sitting on a chair. His cheeks are swollen and he has cuts on his brow; he’s sticking rolled-up pieces of toilet paper up his nose. A lump bulges on his forehead; his right eye is swollen shut. But taking everything into account, he doesn’t look too bad. I give him a nod, but don’t say anything, and neither does he. I flop down on my bed and stare up at the mattress. Again.
When I first came down, I shared a cell with Collins. Ten years older than me, early fifties, an old hand, and with me being a first-timer, he explained the rules: “Don’t be a grass, that’s all you need to know.” From the age of twenty, over several stints, Collins spent thirteen years inside.
There’s a knock on the door. Two screws enter, followed by the Governor.
“Good afternoon, Clive, everything okay?” the Governor asks.
Clive ignores him.
“Clive, the Governor’s speaking to you,” the burly screw, with his arms crossed, bellows.
Clive looks up, disinterested. “Yeah, I’m good. What do you want, sir?” he mumbles, his voice more nasal than usual.
The screw lurches forward but the Governor’s hand across his chest stops him. The Governor turns to me. “Good afternoon, Mike.”
“Hi, Governor.”
“How are you finding it here?”
“Good, sir.”
“I want you to tell me what happened here. But before you answer, I also want you to remember something: if you lie to me, you’ll be making things difficult for yourself. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know, sir.”
The Governor sighs and then shakes his head, all the while keeping his hands behind his back. “I noticed your wife and son are scheduled to see you this week.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Visits are privileges that can be withdrawn.”
Clive clears his throat. “I fell out of bed, Gov.”
“Shut your gob!” the screw screams.
The Governor waits a moment. “Please continue, Mike.”
Clive turns his gaze to me. I continue, “Well, Clive told me he was liable to fall out of bed, sir, but I insisted on having the lower bunk. Anyway, he must have fallen off when I was in the yard.”
“Clive?” The governor glares. Clive shrugs his shoulders.
“Is that all you’ve got to say, Mike?”
I clear my throat. “Well, if you think it will help, sir, I’m happy for us to swap bunks.”
The screws and Governor storm out.
Clive smiles, “After I clear this shit, fancy a game of black jack?”
“Yeah,” I say. And as we play, I tell him about the silver balloon. And for a moment, he looks out through our barred porthole and smiles.
