Alphabet (6 page)

There being no dirty bits, the man in the boiler suit is not interested. He drops the pages back in the box and reaches for the radio, takes the back off, gives it a shake. The brand new sewing needle Simon has taped into the innards stays put.
Boiler suit dumps the radio on the ruined bed without putting it back together again. Number two boiler suit is busy with shoes and toiletries. The dog, by now, has sat down, panting.
They bring Simon back in.

‘Strip off, now. Pants too. Bend over. Socks –' They look underneath his feet, in case he's keeping something at the back of his toes. He's starting to smile, now.

‘What about Big T, then?' the biggest boiler suit asks.
‘What's taking you round there?'

‘Training partners,' he tells them.

‘We're watching you,' the one who was on the landing says.
Not for letters, though; you don't keep those between your toes. Afterwards, he lies on the wrecked bed grinning, and almost wishes he had someone to tell it to.

It turns out that Teverson had his place turned over too, but he was warned beforehand. He's paying someone for that, thinks Simon, which means I am too. All they found was a hash pipe made out of a biro casing, and a bucket of hooch.

‘Gone sour anyway,' Tev says. ‘Would've killed anyone that drank it.'

Thank you for your kind, encouraging letter
, Vivienne Whilden writes, and Simon, eventually, reads. She is clearly nearer to sober this time around, the writing still very large, but more carefully formed.

I am ashamed to say I cannot remember much of what I wrote to you before. However, I am more on top of things now. I would not have begun this correspondence sober, but it is quite interesting to write to a stranger like this.

So far, he thinks so not quite so good. ‘Quite interesting' is not as useful, from his point of view, as drunken despair and desperation . . . But it is a reply at least, and he has heard her that other way too; he knows it exists, underneath. Things can still work out.

I must say it's refreshing to encounter someone who actually likes painting. My view,
vis-à-vis
the pile of bricks and other such postmodernism, is that anyone not an utter moron can tell the emperor is naked. This is psychodrama or theory. Art, on the other hand, must engage with the world and not merely contemplate itself. This view has made me very unpopular here. I used to hope that they would come round, when they became bored of looking at nothing, but it has not happened yet . . .

What happened about Nathan Goode, he wants to know.

She's not telling.

I enclose a bibliography for Pendez. There's not a lot, but the Russell Findlater is good. Until you mentioned him I hadn't actually looked at Pendez for a long while but I remembered admiring him. So I've been back to him and, as you say, the brushwork strikes a wonderful balance between spontaneity and control. Some of the glazes impress me very much too. Especially when you consider the use of colour, he must be counted as an expressionist, but at the same time he stands slightly outside the main trends. The compositions can be almost naive and all the emotionalism is in the intimacy of the brushwork, but it doesn't shout and there isn't any obvious stylisation, rather, a deep, but disciplined sensuality. In context, if you consider the build-up to the war, etc., it's absolutely heartbreaking. I think you might also like the work of Soutine? Am I correct?

No, he thinks, you're up the fucking gum tree! This second letter has an alternatively mind-numbing and enraging effect, similar to reading an F75 report. It fills his head up like so much knotted string to undo. It would take about three months just to work out exactly what she means. Talk about out of his depth!
He skims through the rest: some clever-clever book someone wants her to help them with. Hopeless. There's only so much you can take. If he so much as tries to respond to this, he'll fuck
up. Plus, not a single one of his books has come through, and he can't afford Teverson's escalating charges anyway. Simon tosses Vivienne's second letter in the shoe box with the other one. He goes over to the sink, takes Pendez down and closes him up with a snap. End of Story, he thinks. What next?

It's only a fortnight later, during exercise, that Big T pulls his arm up his back till it hurts, and tells him: ‘You've got mail.' Simon says he can't have, but one look at the envelope and he knows it's her all right. What the fuck?

‘I don't want it,' he says.

‘You should've told her not to write, then. Don't mess me around, I can't have that.' Tev's voice is edgy, he's colouring up.

‘I'm cleaned out,' Simon tells him.

‘Then you owe me, right?'

Don't open it, he advises himself, not listening.

A bit of a wild idea. I have been thinking about taking a holiday, and, after all our discussion about Pendez it strikes me that Barcelona would be very interesting. The flights aren't expensive right now. I do get low if I am too much alone and, especially as I am making a determined effort to curb my drinking, it would be good to have sober company, someone to talk over the galleries and share supper with. Of course, we needn't be in each other's pockets all the time. If you were agreeable, we could perhaps meet in London next month, say at the Tate, to see if we got on. If so, we could make the trip on a strictly friendly basis. Do give me a ring, if it seems . . .

Vivienne Anne Whilden wants Joseph Manderville to go away with her! And Simon Austen, former carpet-layer, a prisoner serving life and currently working as shit-parcel collector, sits in his cell, amazed. To his left is a lump in the wall where they say the treadmill used to be. The chipped paint on the walls and
ceiling is hundreds of layers thick, which, if you think about it, must make the room even smaller than it was to begin with.
He sits, letter in hand, facing the sanitary unit, which gleams like a god in the far right corner; meanwhile, in some other universe, Joseph Manderville and Vivienne Anne Whilden, companionably quiet, stand arm in arm in front of ‘Julia With a Vase of Flowers' in a cool white room in Barcelona. It's hot, a ceiling fan whirring overhead. She looks at him and he looks back at her, not scared at all. Both of them smile and nod, then walk on to the next picture in its gold frame, while songbirds twitter outside. It's what you call a result.

7

Thirty minute wait, and now he's standing with his back to the rest of them, in a Perspex dome that's supposed to insulate against sound. Odd to be doing such an ordinary thing, after all this time. His hands are shaking a bit.

‘Hello?' she says. ‘Hello? Who is it?' It's the most amazing thing: Vivienne's voice is just exactly as he imagined it. ‘Hello.
Say who you are, please, or I shall hang up.'

Vivienne? It's Joseph. Lovely to hear your voice. Yes, it is a bit
noisy. I've only got five minutes or so before either this card runs out or
I get my arm broken. Also, someone is probably listening to every
word. The thing is . . .

He can't do it, and hangs up just before she would have.
Later, he trades in the rest of the phone card for some more good paper. He doesn't want to lose her. His thinking is that he'll try to come out with the facts slowly, bit by bit, hoping that just as her enthusiasm for painting rubbed off onto Joseph, so her liking for Joseph will rub off onto him, will cling like stardust, even when he is fully himself. If things change slowly enough.

I'm afraid this will be brief; I'm laid low with Asian flu and have had to cancel everything. Vivienne, I have a confession to make. I told you I was forty-seven but I am in fact younger than that. A lot younger than you, and you see I thought you might prefer me to be closer to your own age: stupid, I know. It has been bothering me ever since I did it. I do hope you will forgive me! And perhaps I have been so interested in what you write that I have neglected to give you a proper picture of myself. I am for instance very interested in social questions such as Education, Unemployment and the Penal System. Our prisons are bursting at the seams; prisoners are kept in crowded conditions with little or no access to the educational or social opportunities which might reform them. Out of sight out of mind, I'm afraid. I do feel something better should be done, don't you?

It's wonderful, Vivienne, to feel that you are there to talk to about the important things in life, and even though health concerns mean that I may not be able to come, I must thank you again for asking me to Barcelona.

Maybe it's just because he so much wants things to be fixed that he doesn't take as long on the letter as he should; maybe he doesn't read it back to himself because he knows it sounds barmy. In any case, he can't get it posted soon enough.

‘On the slate?' Tev says. ‘You'll pay the lot next time.'

When the answer comes a huge Rasta by the name of Leon is hanging out by Teverson's door and Simon can see straight away that Teverson has taped some paper over his observation panel.

‘I'm owed,' the Rasta says. ‘Give it me, white boy.' Simon doesn't believe him but when he puts his head round the door Tev says, ‘Give it him,' so he hands the cash over then goes in to sort things out and pick up. Teverson is standing there, naked from the waist down, holding his cock. There's some reggae from two doors down, very loud.

‘Can't stand that jungle music,' he says. ‘If you want your love letter, stick that wedge under the door then pull 'em down and get on the floor, arse up.' Simon decides: I have what he wants. That's what matters. He's done it before, after all, at Burnside.

Simon hears Teverson spit. It hurts as he pushes in, then it's not so bad.

‘You bitch' Teverson says to the back of Simon's head, ‘you queer bastard, you.' Teverson's sweat drips on his neck and he
breathes out with each thrust, hot and damp. Simon counts:
forty-two, feels Teverson grab his shoulders and pull, like the other man's trying to push up through the top of his head.
Neither of them makes a sound.

‘Hurry!' Tev says as he gets up, staggering a bit. One thing's for sure, neither of them want to be seen. It's almost funny.

‘I'm not bent, understand. But you, you really liked that, didn't you,' Tev says, into his track pants now, and lighting up.

‘Under that magazine,' he says. ‘Now fuck off.' There's a damp stain on the front of his pants, a sour grin on his face.

Simon is thinking of that stuff inside him and how he'll lay into Tev, come up quiet when he's not expecting it, get him where it hurts, stop him doing it again – at the same time he tells himself over and over it doesn't matter: just a different deal and not as if Tev touched
his
cock. He'll wash. Then, after lock-up, he'll open the letter.

It's one of the screwesses, Martine, tonight, and she calls out as she does the job: ‘Sleep tight, boys.'

‘I'm lonely, miss,' some joker always pipes up. ‘Give us a kiss, miss.'

There's just one sheet of paper inside the envelope:

I am uneasy at the turn this correspondence has taken and do not wish to continue it. Please, do not write again, or I will contact the police.

He needs to do something to steady his hands. Seeing as letters are out, it's got to be another kind of writing. So he inks up with biro on his upper arm, running down towards the elbow. If he could reach that far he'd go for a laugh and put it right where Tev was just now but he can't and he doesn't want anyone else doing this for him. He can work left-handed easily enough: it's just a matter of a letter at a time or else the ink dries too quick. He gets the sewing needle out of the radio, strikes a spark from his flint, lights a Marlboro and uses that to heat up the point till it glows red, waits, then pushes it in, again, again,
again as dense as possible. Rub in, wipe off when it's done.
Doesn't hurt beyond what he can stand, it's more that after a while he feels like passing out, that's OK, and anyhow he never does. So – BITCH: it's on the right forearm, nicely balancing out, on the left arm, PRICK. So he's got the beginnings of a collection there on his arms, linking up to DUMB on the fingers of the left hand, CUNT, as in
you dumb
cunt!
, on the right, which was told to him years ago in a police van when he asked if it could stop because he was going to throw up . . . Altogether he has a fair number of words on him now. There are things he has been called since he came inside, mostly bad: ARROGANT, WASTE OF SPACE, BASTARD, SHIT, and so on, he's got all those, plus one or two from before that stuck in his mind, like IMPOSSIBLE, WEIRDO, CARPET-FITTER, MURDERER, of course, along with A THREAT TO WOMEN, BRUTAL and COLD, which were the judge's words for him. BRIGHT, he was called when he was in Education and he had that one done properly, on his back.

The ink goes in under the skin and once the scab is off there you are, it's yours to keep. Some of them have turned out better than others and a couple of the older ones do have spelling mistakes, but even so no one laughs at him when he strips to shower because they know he'll go apeshit if they do, because this, he thinks, this is what I
am
.

8

The library books arrive, six of them, smelling of ink and weighing about a hundredweight; funny, really, very I for ironic. But at least it means there's something to talk to Barry about. Simon sits in the sweltering Portakabin – the air's so warm that just breathing makes him sweat – and passes on all his thoughts about A for art. He gives Barry an outline of the life of Pendez and his sister Julia, explains that their relationship was a criminal one and it went on until his death, so you could hardly call it accidental! Did the art that came out of it, ‘Julia in a Man's Jacket', ‘Julia Sleeping', ‘Julia Alone', ‘Julia Before the Mirror' – did all that A for art make it all right? And if so, suppose a murderer did paintings about murdering or wrote poems or a book about it, would people start to overlook the murder the same way they overlooked Pendez fucking his sister when he shouldn't have? You could say that they are both
taboos
, Simon points out.
Social conventions
. . . After this, he thinks, I'll never get out. So what?