me
–
as if I’m looking in a skewed mirror. McLaughlin is the man I could have become had I followed a different path. And I’m the convict he might have turned into had he not managed to duck at the last minute.
‘Fourteen years, eh? What a shame,’ he says.
Martin coughs nervously. You don’t remind a man of his crime in passing, like chatting about the weather. You do that only when push comes to shove. Usually no one reminds anyone of what went before. A man in gaol is a man incarcerated in the past anyway.
‘Alex has turned a corner in the last few years,’ Martin butts in, like a tourist guide. ‘He’s gone through some dark times and is now coming back.’
Dear old Martin. Such optimism. I’ve been through hell, true. But he knows and Trippy knows and I know and my mother’s ghost knows that I’m still there.
I had an awful reputation. I suppose I still do. I easily went for a rib. It was hard to predict what would piss me off. Even I couldn’t tell most of the time. When I was off key I got violent. My left punch was as strong as a brick, so they say. Sometimes I just burst out. The only other cons who would get like this were the junkies. When they craved goods and there was no supply, they lost their rag. But I’m no addict. And that makes me scarier, perhaps. This is my sober state of mind. I harmed myself. My head. Because I didn’t like what was in there. I burned cigarettes inside my palms. They swelled, like puffy eyes. I slashed my legs. Lots of meat on a leg, the thighs, the knees, the ankles. Plenty of possibility. In Shrewsbury a razor is as precious as a ruby, but not as impossible to find.
‘You two will get to know each other,’ says Martin.
‘Well, I’m sure we will,’ says Officer McLaughlin.
Trippy is watching the tension build, uneasy. He knows what’s happening. He’s seen it before. Sometimes a screw takes against one of us and that’s the end of the story. You get off to a bad start and it never gets any better.
The tourist guide makes another attempt at reconciliation. ‘Alex is a boxer. He’s our athlete. He earned a medal when he was at school.’
It is a funny thing to say in my defence and needless to say no one laughs. I want to thank Martin for backing me, but if I move my eyes away from the young officer, even for a second, I will leave myself open.
He has to see I’m no wimp. The last time I was one, it was over twenty years ago. I was a boy in a tree running away from circumcision. It didn’t help. Since then I’ve never been weak. I’ve been wrong. Fucking wrong. But never weak. So I don’t flinch, I don’t blink, I keep staring into the eyes of this McLaughlin, who is staring into my eyes probably for the same bloody reasons.
Then they leave.
*
I wake up in the middle of the night with a start. At first I think my mother has visited me. But, hard as I try, I can’t feel her presence. No rustle like a leaf falling, no soft glow like moonlight trapped. There is only Trippy, snoring, farting, grinding his teeth, fighting his demons.
I sit bolt upright on the bed and look around to find out what on earth could have woken me up. And then I see it. There on the floor is a paper. Somebody must have pushed it through the bars in the door. In the dimmest light penetrating from the corridor, I pick it up. It’s a newspaper clipping. The
Daily Express
.
BOY KILLED HIS MOTHER FOR ‘HONOUR’, 2 DECEMBER 1978
A 16-year-old boy of Turkish/Kurdish origin stabbed his mother to death in Hackney in an act of honour killing. Iskender Toprak stabbed Pembe Toprak in front of the family home on Lavender Grove.
It is claimed that the 33-year-old mother of three had an extramarital affair. Neighbours said, though they remained married, Adem and Pembe Toprak no longer lived together. ‘But when the father is absent like that the mother’s honour is guarded by the eldest son, which in this case was Iskender,’ said an eyewitness. The police are now
–
as if I’m looking in a skewed mirror. McLaughlin is the man I could have become had I followed a different path. And I’m the convict he might have turned into had he not managed to duck at the last minute.
‘Fourteen years, eh? What a shame,’ he says.
Martin coughs nervously. You don’t remind a man of his crime in passing, like chatting about the weather. You do that only when push comes to shove. Usually no one reminds anyone of what went before. A man in gaol is a man incarcerated in the past anyway.
‘Alex has turned a corner in the last few years,’ Martin butts in, like a tourist guide. ‘He’s gone through some dark times and is now coming back.’
Dear old Martin. Such optimism. I’ve been through hell, true. But he knows and Trippy knows and I know and my mother’s ghost knows that I’m still there.
I had an awful reputation. I suppose I still do. I easily went for a rib. It was hard to predict what would piss me off. Even I couldn’t tell most of the time. When I was off key I got violent. My left punch was as strong as a brick, so they say. Sometimes I just burst out. The only other cons who would get like this were the junkies. When they craved goods and there was no supply, they lost their rag. But I’m no addict. And that makes me scarier, perhaps. This is my sober state of mind. I harmed myself. My head. Because I didn’t like what was in there. I burned cigarettes inside my palms. They swelled, like puffy eyes. I slashed my legs. Lots of meat on a leg, the thighs, the knees, the ankles. Plenty of possibility. In Shrewsbury a razor is as precious as a ruby, but not as impossible to find.
‘You two will get to know each other,’ says Martin.
‘Well, I’m sure we will,’ says Officer McLaughlin.
Trippy is watching the tension build, uneasy. He knows what’s happening. He’s seen it before. Sometimes a screw takes against one of us and that’s the end of the story. You get off to a bad start and it never gets any better.
The tourist guide makes another attempt at reconciliation. ‘Alex is a boxer. He’s our athlete. He earned a medal when he was at school.’
It is a funny thing to say in my defence and needless to say no one laughs. I want to thank Martin for backing me, but if I move my eyes away from the young officer, even for a second, I will leave myself open.
He has to see I’m no wimp. The last time I was one, it was over twenty years ago. I was a boy in a tree running away from circumcision. It didn’t help. Since then I’ve never been weak. I’ve been wrong. Fucking wrong. But never weak. So I don’t flinch, I don’t blink, I keep staring into the eyes of this McLaughlin, who is staring into my eyes probably for the same bloody reasons.
Then they leave.
*
I wake up in the middle of the night with a start. At first I think my mother has visited me. But, hard as I try, I can’t feel her presence. No rustle like a leaf falling, no soft glow like moonlight trapped. There is only Trippy, snoring, farting, grinding his teeth, fighting his demons.
I sit bolt upright on the bed and look around to find out what on earth could have woken me up. And then I see it. There on the floor is a paper. Somebody must have pushed it through the bars in the door. In the dimmest light penetrating from the corridor, I pick it up. It’s a newspaper clipping. The
Daily Express
.
BOY KILLED HIS MOTHER FOR ‘HONOUR’, 2 DECEMBER 1978
A 16-year-old boy of Turkish/Kurdish origin stabbed his mother to death in Hackney in an act of honour killing. Iskender Toprak stabbed Pembe Toprak in front of the family home on Lavender Grove.
It is claimed that the 33-year-old mother of three had an extramarital affair. Neighbours said, though they remained married, Adem and Pembe Toprak no longer lived together. ‘But when the father is absent like that the mother’s honour is guarded by the eldest son, which in this case was Iskender,’ said an eyewitness. The police are now
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