Blah! Nuts to the Beast. Nuts to Life. The Governor sick to the false teeth with other people taking advantage of a generous nature. Chip-chip-chipping the bone and gristle until he has not a sausage left to offer. And where the medal of thanks? A stinking conspiracy. A KGB or Baby of the Bath should have been plopping on the mat monkey’s moons ago. Well they can sod off and pick on some other Charlie Muggins.
‘Grafter noon.’
‘Sod off.’ The Governor turns by the Screw on the Main Gate and heads into a bay of concrete.
A private devil tippy-tap-taps the walls of his skull with a hammer <—> Peptic ulcer playing up rotten <—> The rollocking, roasting, railing ransacking from the Beast at the breakfast table reducing his cranial crisis to burnt toast <—> Promises lashed like marmalade to consult the important people over the sticky state of their marriage: the Beast’s best friend Mavis Clarke, Dear Lizbie Browne whose Problem Page in Modern Woman runs a popular campaign against men, Margaret Roberts from the cornershop, and last and by all means fattest her solicitor Percy Pettifog.
Common clouds of Sin smother the dome and squall Judgment Day. The mother of all storms blowing from across the Atlantic, says Sara Blizzard the Weatherlady, and sane Englishmen are advised to cower in their castles and prepare for cover.
Walls and bars ooze thick blobs of black. A hideous hangover from the wash-houses of Victoria. Ghouls are said to hide in the crooks and crevices. But the flushing of voices in the head is when you should really worry.
‘Lemme in!’ bawls the Governor at a bulwark of sheet-metal and wood. Waiting with the patience of a saint.
The hatch screen drops. Bulging bloodshot eyeballs blink: ‘Who dare?’
‘Me,’ says the Governor.
‘Who me?’
‘The man with your P45.’
‘Oh lummy. Sorry.’
The Great Gate grating steel on stone, heaving a hulk from Hell, grating the marrow of your soul. Steel teeth rising. Alone and all over a mesmorised brave Gerbil.
‘Snumph! I cooder died a death out there.’
‘Yussar.’
‘Blunkett, you’re an idiot.’
‘Funk you, sar,’
‘You were born an idiot and you will die an idiot.’
— ‘Say hello to the Governor, boys.’
The bass drum of the devil smashes the skull with a sledgehammer <—> Stomach drops through the green linoleum <—> Throat seizes the strangles <—> Skull spinning <—> Weak and wobbly knees <—> Shit <—> A voice to die for even in the depths of the devil’s privy <—> The Governor swivels slowly to confront the Professor’s Heaven-blue eyes:
‘We’re off to see the Doctor for drugs.’
‘Drugs?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see. And what part of drugs did you have in mind?’
‘Blessed be the dry at heart. For they shall receive stashes from Heaven.’
‘If you seriously think I’m giving free drugs to every Tom, Dick and Harry who dumps on my doorstep ...’
‘Governor, I’m ashamed of you.’
Pain zaps from the tip of a firm finger and zippers the pigeon bones of the sternum with the force of a dentist’s drill <—> He staggers <—> Head throbbing <—> Hot blood races round and round hyperballistically <—> He faints before the barrier of a blinking freckled midget, black man and Mexican bandit <—>
The Professor weaving like Prospero blue smoke signals — ‘I see Leaflets ... Lectures … Seminars … and with —’
‘Leaflets?’
‘— your full support —’
‘Support?’ squawks the Governor and gerbil-charging the black man. ‘Yes of course. Now, gentlemen, excuse me please ...’
The gold nameplate on the office door glisters a sweet familiarity. Sanctuary. Fired with the determination of an Olympic sprinter on steroids he forces knees to pump at speed. Across the home-plate of safety. Fast flops to the filing cabinet. Fast flows his favourite medicine.
Freefalls the souls of the dead.
A gutful of Knees’s open-house jibes. The Beast and her homegrown mutiny. Overdue the pot of medals promised at the privatisation party. Order of the Bath ... BEM ... TCP ... Top table at Lodge and tax-free share options toiled by a man of the people. Your angry red-top punter at the breakfast table must be made to agree a Hero single-handedly should be held responsible for liberating a backward Dickensian institution. The bad old days gone for good. Springwood two-to-a-cell, not five. Springwood with proper toilets and running electricity. Screws no longer Screws, they are Client Managers. And every man-jack of ’em will readily be pushing their mothers for the management training courses in the Welsh mountains.
Now Knees peddling the white lie they have a drugs problem. Another red herring. Another rollmop. And the Governor of Springwood Prison will not be swallowing the bait this time.
Easily the best Governor in the country. A handsome highly paid Pioneer of Privatisation. Neck ready to be wrung with the over-rich rewards of High Office.
Blundering Blunkett bushed, burdened and buckled by a bale-weight of budget sheets, brows bursting with bile and bad eggs and bacon rashers and bottom burps and big bellies blustering, ‘Bad news, sar.’
‘Spill the beans.’
Boom-crash the budget sheets.
‘Hiss the Accountants’ Union ... hup in arms.’
The Governor rocks, scotch in hand, the cradle of crack-leather comfort. ‘I’m scared witless. What? Planning to attack me with a biro? Militant wing fiddling for blood? No don’t tell me — run out of paperclips — ha!’
‘Accountants reckon Chef’s been shaving t’ Catering budget.’
‘Shaving a budget? Make sense. This is a prison. Not a bloody barber’s shop.’
‘I wouldn’t know, sar.’
‘Catering ... Catering ...’ A pot of trouble thumbing the budget sheets on account of his right hand’s refusal to stop shaking — ‘... Oh this is hopeless ... Where’s Catering?’
‘Sar ...’
‘Mmm?’
‘... You remember telling Chef and the boys you hex-peck them to be hot-shot Managers, don’t you, sar? ...’
‘Yes.’
‘... And, sar ...’
‘What?’
‘... Then there was the training films and the pep-talks, wasn’t there, sar? ...’
‘So?’
‘... And who can forget the barnstorming sessions? ...’
‘Barnstorming?’
‘... Which disney last long as I recall ...’
‘Blunkett —’
‘... And, sar, you must remember dat weekend in the Welsh mountains when you upset dem gypsies ...’
‘Oh for f —’
‘... And Clarkey’s todger got frostbite ...’
‘Yes! Yes!’
‘... And the rescue men drop him down the mountain for laughing ...’
Foetid foreboding forces the stomach up the windpipe with the force of a jet-stream from Hell <—>
Incomprehensible digits scurry the page like ants on acid.
… Daily Food Allowance Per Customer …
£1.68
Good.
… He traces the row – Actual Spending Per Customer …
£0.42
‘Oh my God!’
A wormhole rips the stomach and reaches the portals of Hell <—>
‘Washup, sar?’
Tormented by the tail-devils of Sanity, Career, Pension, swirling the Toilet Bowl of Life, down the tubes and out of sight.
‘Wash wrong?’