8

Still going into the prison, reading the men’s writings, listening to their talk.

Fascinating facts and tales from the poky.

Pale wall of dreams.

Standing in a cell one evening while its occupant brews tea in the wing kitchen.

Hung with old calendars and magazine pictures.

High narrow slit of a window.

Looked out on a bare courtyard lit by electric lamps.

Full of the melancholy which seeps into the bones in prison at night.

Always get into those places. What is hard is to get out.

Hole in the wall, a gap in the barbed wire.

The black-bordered finger-thick dividing line.

Except that the dividing line doesn’t always run along the concrete balustrade.

Two or three days and nights went by.

Cold grey day.

Headed for the projects.

Poke ’em where they live a little bit ’n’ see what happens.

Or at least where the boy used to live with his mother, according to his file.

Den in the farthest east of the city.

Said that premises retain some stamp, however faint, of their previous inhabitants.

Weather closing in as he arrives at the estate.

Milky fog.

Buildings looming like giant ghosts.

Woman points him the way.

No use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working.

Ungarnished staircase.

Hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats.

Dim-lit doorway.

Long time since he has stood at the threshold of any residence other than his own.

Bell which was so worn it rang only intermittently.

Door opened a crack. A woman’s face.

Who might you be?

Wrong place, I expect.

Peered through the chink.

Not place, time.

What did he imagine?

Tuberstirrings in the blacksweet duff.

The boy’s shape in the shadows.

This is where I used to sleep. My cot was against this wall.

This is where we used to have Christmas.

Though as the door closes he sees a movement in the window of the neighbouring apartment.

Curtain was drawn aside and a narrow intent face was close to the glass.

Snow-white hair.

Rang the bell, the door snapped open.

What you want young man?

Better come in.

Front room that had cotton lace antimacassars pinned on everything you could stick a pin into.

Can’t be too careful these days.

Have a seat over on the couch.

People really bad mind, you know.

Came here twenty-two years ago we didn’t lock our doors hardly.

Here when she brought the boy home from the hospital.

Little fellow in a bag.

Throat vibrating with a queer rasping noise.

When they took him away.

Local rozzers.

Fourteen hundred hours at the maternal domicile.

When they took her, too.

St John ambulance.

From that appointment she never came back.

Wasn’t exactly the sort you get to know.

Don’t have no visitors.

Floor dirty with footprint and cigarette butt.

Opinion is she drinks liquor.

As for his soul.

Ain’t sure I could put a name to it.

Hours standing at the window.

Gazing from the smoky room inside the glass.

Seemed to wait for something.

Whatever it was didn’t come, or turned out wrong.

Went and joined a set of thieves and bad characters and almost broke his mother’s heart.

Shook her head.

Stands himself and walks to the window.

Lawn of weedy grass.

In a few high windows of the apartment towers violet and reddish lights gleam.

Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens.

Worked in the launderette the other side of those blocks.

Take him with her when he was small and lay him in one of them plastic baskets they used for the washing.