The Convictions of John Delahunt by Hughes Andrew

Author:Hughes, Andrew [Hughes, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781448169771
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2013-09-11T23:00:00+00:00

8

That room in the Ship Street barracks was in effect my first cell, even though it was spacious and fairly comfortable. My final abode in Kilmainham, by comparison, is dingy, damp and narrow. I’m not sure the bunk would fit if I dragged it sideways. But I’ve grown fond of it. For the most part, I’m left alone and feel oddly secure. No one can get at me here. There’s a comfort in the routine that the officers stick to. And the room itself has a symmetry, in that the barred arched window aligns with the stone barrel ceiling and curve of the doorframe.

My warder, turnkey Turner, appeared late in the afternoon and said, ‘Come along, John. We have to make you presentable for the big day.’ He led me to a cell outside of which three other inmates were waiting. One by one we were called within, and judging by those ahead of me, who emerged clipped and shaven, this was the prison barber. I was surprised when I entered to find that the barber was himself a convict. His cell was just like mine, except a chair had been placed in the centre beside a small table and a basin that brimmed with murky water. The light from his window separated on its oily surface. The floor was covered with assorted hair, as if some mottled beast had crawled into its den to moult.

When I sat down, the barber spoke to me with the affected cheeriness common to his profession. ‘So,’ he said, ‘are you in here long?’

‘Less than a month.’

He took some hand-held clippers I’d have thought more suited for livestock, and began to roughly bare my head. ‘That’s no time at all.’ Tufts of dark hair tumbled over my shoulders and into my lap.

Then he dipped a shaving brush in the basin, swept it twice over a yellow soap and dabbed at my face.

‘What did you do for work on the outside?’

‘I was a student.’

The razor he used was dull and abrasive. Its wooden haft was worn smooth so the handle had more gleam than the blade. He pulled the skin taut over my jaw, and scraped the edge along the underside of my chin.

‘How did you end up in here?’

‘I killed someone.’

The blade paused, and he asked my name.

‘Delahunt.’

‘Oh.’

The blade resumed.

He didn’t speak after that. When finished he merely grunted, wiped my face with a foul cloth, and told me to send in the next in line.

As Turner escorted me back, he told me employing a prisoner in this fashion had been his idea. ‘I thought, rather than putting this delinquent barber to work breaking stones, why not have him shave his fellow prisoners and even some of the guards?’ He was clearly proud of the scheme, as if the idea put him at the forefront of enlightened prison-keeping. ‘But Shankly’s term elapses in a few weeks, so that’ll be the end of it.’

I suggested the prison should hire a barber to continue the initiative, but Turner was confident another of that profession would be committed here soon enough.

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