Friday 25th August 2023
Leo
The day Frank Jordan first spoke to him was the day the fight broke out between Stevens and Hasan during association time.
Leo was playing cards with Cliff at the small, wobbly table and Cliff was winning as usual. Leo’s competitive instincts had withered to nothing in the last two years, but he liked the cards’ rhythmic movements and Cliff’s running commentary. He’d learned to tune out the surrounding racket of pool games. Nobody told you how loud prison was, all the time.
‘You okay, mate?’ Cliff asked, waving a hand in front of Leo’s face.
Leo blinked back into the room. ‘Sorry. Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.’
‘Visit got under your skin?’
He nodded, shrugged, and Cliff dealt another hand, swearing as the table lurched. Leo wedged his knee under it, his mind drifting again. It wasn’t what his mum said during her visits, but what she didn’t say. All the topics she avoided, the questions he never asked. Afterwards, his brain would go into overdrive, darkly filling in the gaps.
Cliff showed him a winning card with a sheepish grin. ‘Lucky for you we’ve nothing to actually play for.’
‘I’d have nothing left by this point even if we did.’
It was then that Stevens shoved back his chair on the other side of the room. ‘Thieving fucker!’ he hollered, launching himself at Hasan.
‘It’s mine!’ Hasan shouted back, pushing him away. Stevens staggered and Leo froze – always waiting for that thud, sometimes hearing it even when it didn’t come – but Stevens stayed on his feet and went for Hasan again.
Everybody started moving. Most people scattered from the fight, some ran towards it, circled it, and then the guards swooped in, barking warnings, pulling the two guys apart.
Leo dived for the door out to the TV room. He was used to fights after two years in here, but some things he couldn’t watch anymore, like the gleam of absolute blind anger in someone’s eyes. Most of all, he hated the aftermath. Hated knowing who would be blamed or believed – whichever way it went, it always left him feeling sick to his stomach.
There were people in the next room watching the monthly film, taking little notice of the ruckus next door. A few looked up as he burst in, but most of them ignored him. The guards simply frowned, motioning for him to sit down. The room was hot and the flickering light of the TV made everybody’s faces look strange.
As he searched for a corner to tuck himself into, Leo felt a pair of eyes on him from the dimmed back row. A hand in the air, seeming to beckon. A distinctive, bulky silhouette. Leo froze. Surely Frank Jordan wasn’t gesturing for him to approach? They’d never even spoken, and Leo’s instinct was to keep it that way.
Inching forward, he saw Frank motion, with one cocked finger, to the spare seat next to him. Leo longed to reverse out of the room now, back into the light and bustle of the main association space, fight or no fight. But Frank wasn’t someone you refused. Warily, he slid in next to him. Frank’s mates, on the other side, ran their eyes over Leo in the darkness.
Next to Frank, he felt tiny. The older man sat with his legs spread, a hand on each knee, one foot tapping even though no music was playing.
‘Who’s scrapping?’ he asked.
His eyes were on the TV, so Leo wasn’t completely certain he was talking to him.
‘Uh – Stevens and Hasan,’ he said after a pause, realising he must be.
‘About?’
‘I … I’m not sure. The usual, I think.’
Most fights in this place were about stuff. About the few pathetic belongings they all had to their names. Who had nicked whose stuff, who had touched whose stuff without asking, who had the best stuff and how could other people get it?
Frank looked at him sidelong, then nodded towards the room he’d fled. ‘Not a fan of violence?’
Leo coughed and stared at the screen, but it was an interior shot now, a quieter moment, and the whole room turned dark and still.
They sat in silence for a while and Frank seemed to get genuinely engrossed. It was weird to see him doing something as normal as watching TV: the old-timer whom everybody feared, about whom there were so many rumours. He looked sort of childlike when he was concentrating: the way he tilted his head and widened his eyes, his mouth a tiny bit open. Leo realised the film was one of his mum’s favourites. Homesickness went through him like an ache, but left something cold and troubling behind. Home was tainted now. Home was where he was the enemy.
‘I think we have something in common,’ Frank said out of nowhere.
Leo turned his head. ‘Sorry?’
Frank studied him, his face suddenly close. He had milky eyes, deep grooves all around them, a distinctively misshapen nose. Nothing childlike about this angle. It was a hard life kind of a face.
‘Me and you,’ he said. ‘We’ve got something in common.’
‘What’s that?’ Leo asked, glancing nervously around.
‘Or should I say somewhere,’ Frank said, with a slow, unsettling grin.