The Wing Orderly's Tales by Carlo Gébler

Author:Carlo Gébler [Carlo Gébler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-84840-496-0
Publisher: New Island Books

Engine

‘One on,’ the Escort screw shouted. ‘New boy,’ he added.

He was wiry and brown. He carried two Loanend Suitcases with his name and prison number scrawled on the outside in felt tip. He’d just been sentenced but he didn’t look stunned like men often do at this time. He looked calm and thoughtful. He was obviously not your run-of-the-mill con.

Hayes sauntered out of the class office and took the paperwork from the Escort screw and glanced at it.

‘Right,’ Hayes said, as if to say, ‘Yes, we’ve been expecting him.’

The Escort screw left.

‘Chalky,’ said Hayes.

I was polishing the hot water urns on the other side of the circle.

‘Aye.’ I stepped across.

‘Chalky’s our orderly,’ Hayes explained to the new prisoner. ‘He’s got your cell ready.’

The prisoner bowed solemnly. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said. His voice was incredible. It was an actor’s in an old black and white film. Nobody talked like that anymore, at least nobody I knew.

I brought him to the store and issued him with a bedroll and a Welcome Pack and led him to Cell 3 on ‘F’ wing. It smelt of piss and shite even though I’d given the toilet a good scrub. A pin board hung on the wall over the iron prison bed. There were nasty bits of graffiti scribbled in biro in the corners and smears of old toothpaste that had been used as glue to hold pictures up. The cell was small, cheerless and depressing.

‘What do they call you?’ I asked.

In his posh English accent, he said he was Sri Lankan so he had a Sri Lankan name but because he was a ship’s engineer by trade his jail name, which he got while waiting for sentencing, was Engine. Obviously.

I set his bedroll and Welcome Pack on the mattress and he dropped his Loanend Suitcases on the floor and we shook hands. ‘Chalky,’ I said, ‘from Chalkman.’

‘Ah, chalk,’ he said. ‘What you write with on a blackboard?’

‘Exactly.’

I offered him a roll-up. He accepted. We sat on the bed with the metal bin at our feet as an ashtray and we smoked and talked. He wasn’t like anybody else I’d ever known in jail. He wasn’t guarded and he didn’t talk tough as if he had to prove he was a hard man. He seemed normal and friendly and I decided it was safe to ask him what I usually wouldn’t think of asking a con.

‘What happened to you? What are you in for?’

Engine shrugged. ‘I have a partner,’ he said. Then he shook his head. ‘No, correction, I had a partner. Irish girl, Mary. We lived together in Belfast when I was not at sea. We had a daughter. Eleven years old now. We were not married, Mary and I. This was a mistake, not to marry.

‘One day last year, Mary said the relationship was over and she asked me to leave the house. I got a knife and went to cut myself. I wanted to die. She tried to stop me. We fought. I pushed her away.

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