Billy Rags (13 page)

Life droned on like this for a little while until I'd decided who to pull as far as making one was concerned. Karate and Atkin were right out. Ray had once been on Walter's firm. At Ray's trial the Filth had offered Ray a trade: although Walter was already inside, they'd told Ray that if he'd give them some more stuff on Walter's operations they'd leave out the bird. Ray had turned it down and he'd got a ten. I'm not saying you deserve anything for not being a grass but even Walter had been moved to offer him a business when he got out. Although at this time Ray wasn't very pally with Walter, I wasn't going to risk pulling in someone who had a present coming from Walter, and apart from Terry whom I couldn't quite suss, that left Tommy. So one day I dropped by his cell.

He was lying on his pit staring up at the ceiling. I sat down on his chair. Neither of us said anything for a while. I took out a couple of snouts and gave one to Tommy and lit us both up and he grunted but that was all. We just stayed as we were, smoking.

“I don't know about you, Tommy,” I said eventually, “one big happy family it may be at the moment, but I've a feeling the novelty might wear off during the next twenty odd years or so.”

Tommy didn't say anything. The thought flashed across my mind that Walter might have put him in it about the possibility of me approaching him and offered Tommy a little present as well.

“Or is it the time off for good behaviour you're thinking of?” I said.

Tommy smiled.

“Sure, Billy,” he said. “I don't mind sitting here for fifteen years instead of twenty. There's a big difference, isn't there?”

I smiled and said nothing. After a time Tommy said:

“I'll tell you, Billy. There's only one thing I think about while I'm awake and that's the top of that wall. And when I'm not awake I dream about it.”

I didn't say anything.

“I'm thirty-one, Billy,” Tommy said. “As far as I'm concerned there's no alternative.”

I didn't want to break the unwritten law by asking him point blank if he'd got any plans; there'd been times when a con had told another con an idea and he'd been beaten to the line. So instead I said: “Walter's of that frame of mind, too.”

“I thought he might be,” Tommy said. “Mind you, with him you've got to be a fucking mind-reader.”

“Right,” I said. “He doesn't put much about.”

Tommy's hamster took a few more turns on its wheel.

So we were both agreed about Walter.

“All I was thinking,” I said, “was that if either of us were in the running for making one, and it coincided with somebody else, or something like that . . .”

“I know,” said Tommy. “You've got to know the form, but there aren't all that many people you can bank on to give you fair odds. So you tend to try and make it sans assistance.”

“That's right,” I said.

There was a silence.

“Course,” he said, “there are times when you can't do it all on your own.”

I nodded.

“Tell me, Billy,” he said. “You're a deep thinker. Where would you say you got the most privacy in this wing? Apart from after nine o'clock in the evening, I mean.”

There was only one place in the wing where you could work at making one and that was in the shower room.

The shower room was down on the Ones on the inside corner of the L. There were four stalls on the right hand side as you went in, a tin locker, and a long wooden gymnasium bench and a couple of standard cell issue tables. There was a big window to the left of the door about three foot wide, six foot high and six foot off the ground that faced out into the exercise yard. The window was barred and meshed and wired up to the control room. Apart from this window there was no other ventilation in the shower room and the window would steam up solid and even if the door was open, looking into the shower room from the doorway all you could see were fleshy muzzy blobs walking about. So as far as privacy was concerned the shower room was wide open. But the floor was concrete and the walls were built of three inch stone blocks so they were out too.

But for the sake of the discussion I said: “Well, obviously, the shower room. But beyond that feature, there's nothing else going for it.”

Tommy sat up and swung his legs over the side of his pit and stood up.

“I want to show you something,” he said, and walked out of the cell.

I hurried after him. We walked down to the shower room in silence.

The shower room was empty except for Strachey. He was sitting on the gymnasium bench reading
Playhour
.

“It's time for ‘Jackanory,' Strachey,” Tommy said.

Strachey wobbled his monstrous head in our direction.

“Out,” said Tommy.

Strachey got to his feet like an over-seventy and dragged himself out of the shower room. When he'd gone Tommy pointed to the corner nearest to the door on the left hand side as you came in. The window to the left of the door was three foot away from the corner. But instead of the wall following on to make a natural corner with the side wall, it cut across the corner forming a diagonal.

“Billy,” Tommy said, “have a look at this bit of wall here and tell me if you think there's anything unusual about it?”

Tommy liked the dialectical approach to things.

I shrugged.

“Not really,” I said. “Just a bit of brickwork.”

“Billy,” he said, “they never do anything in the nick without a reason, no matter how fucking stupid. That corner's been cut off for a reason.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Bet your fucking life, man. It's either an old chimney or a ventilation shaft that's been bricked off,”

“Could be.”

“It's the same all the way up the Twos and Threes. Must be on the Fours as well. It's got to be. We ought to probe it and see what we get.”

“But Tommy,” I said, “right here in the middle of the wing it won't get us anywhere.”

“I know, but it might
take
us somewhere. Supposing we could get down into the cellars. Maybe we could find a weakness there. Or maybe we could crawl right up it and come out on the roof. You never know, Billy.”

Tommy looked at me and I looked at the corner.

“What else have we got?” Tommy said.

I nodded.

“Sweet fuck all,” Tommy said.

“If we have a crack,” I said, “just you and me, right? Nobody else.”

“Right.”

“Especially no Wally.”

“Right.”

We both looked at the corner again.

I lie on my bed, staring at the blackness above me. I can't sleep. I am sick of the remand home. I am sick of being treated like a kid. The whole place is full of kids. My shop breaking offences are rather heady stuff to them. I am the man. Small boys vie with each other to eat my cabbage, which it is forbidden not to finish up. They are just kids and the place is a bore. I must get away. When I'm sentenced I want to go to prison with my mates. I don't want to be the odd one out because of my age. Escaping from the remand home will put me in line for a sentence. I want to take what they take.

The next day I escape and make it back to London. I phone my mother and let her think she's persuaded me to give myself up.

But when we go for trial, I only get BT. The others have already done their borstal. They get exemplary sentences of five years each. But when I come out again, I'm a bigger man in my field than before.

Which is the important thing.

The next day the wing got an additional member. We could really have very well done without him. A real mad-head called Jerry Chimers. A mug. A half-cocked chancer who'd translated himself into a gangster by pumping off a shotgun in a Saturday night pub just to get even for a well-deserved duffing. He'd got a fifteen and was very proud of it. He expanded quickly in the wing's new permissive atmosphere and on the first day he was walking around in his pressed tie and his sharp grey suit stirring off the screws like a veteran. The next day the suit and tie disappeared. He went off like clockwork about it but it served him fucking well right. The one consolation was that he and Karate were made for each other. That was smashing news for the rest of us.

So Tommy and I gave Chimers a day or two to flex himself before we had a proper go at the diagonal wall.

We timed it so we took our shower after all the others.

We took a small metal peg off the weight-lifting stands and began to chip away at the plaster to find the edge of a brick. Tommy was the chipper, I was the minder. I'd pull the bench out slightly from the diagonal and sit down. This gave me a good view of where the screws congregated on the bottom landing. Tommy would crouch behind me and the bench and I'd warn him if anyone started for the shower room. The diagonal we were working at was at too fine an angle to be seen from outside even if the steam hadn't obscured it. If the screws did want to check on us or deliver a message they would just stick their heads round the door. They didn't want to come into the wet steaming shower room in their bulled-up uniforms. When we finished a chipping stint we just pushed back the bench and that covered up where we'd been working. The screws on their rounds only checked the window and the outside wall. As far as they were concerned nobody in their right mind would try and make one where we were working.

It took us two days to chip the plaster away. Then another five days to get through all the cemented sides of the first brick. The trouble was the diagonal was two bricks thick. It was going to take quite some time. But we had plenty of that and we were on our way. We didn't care how long it took.

The party is hot and loud and alcohol stinks out the small room. There is no room to jive but people are jiving anyway, clouting into the drinkers. I am standing by the fireplace, holding my glass to my chest, waiting for someone to bump into me. The whisky is pushing sweat out of my face and my stomach is tight with aggression. Across the room I notice two birds talking together, looking at me. I know one of them, Eileen Austen. She's talking into the other one's ear, grinning. The other one has auburn hair and a clever face, a self-rater. Eileen Austen begins to forge her way through the mob, grinning ever wider. The aggressive muscles relax a little and there is a shaft of excitement in my chest because this is the best part, the chatting, the recognition, the reinforcement of my feelings about myself. Later, she'll just be any other bird, a release mechanism; someone I'll resent giving it to, and I'll dislike myself for being weak.

Eileen makes the introductions. This is Sheila. Sheila Moss. I've told her all about you, the stupid cow says. But at the same time I'm glad she has. She'll know she's not talking to just anybody. She tries to show she couldn't care less, but I know. Later I walk her home, via Lowther Street and its shell houses. She's good but otherwise she's just like the rest. Afterwards wanting to hold hands, snuggle up, wanting me to ask if I can see her again. Her attitude is totally different to what it was before. Now she's behaving as if I'm somebody.

Terry used to watch this boating programme on Sunday afternoons and there was this bird who used to cavort all over the place in her shorts and Terry used to drool all over the telly when she was on. One afternoon when we were all in there Ray said to Terry: “If you fancy her so bleeding strong, why don't you drop her a line?”

“Do leave off,” Terry said.

“No, straight up. She might just write back. Might even send you a photo.”

“You must be joking,” said Terry. “Do me a favour.”

Walter seized the opportunity to come the old magnanimous bit.

“Listen, my son,” he said to Terry, “I know a bird you can write to. She's a stripper up West. Candy her name is. A right good girl she is. You write to her and tell her you met her with me and Les one night and she'd write back. With a bit of luck she might even come and see you. On my life, a right good girl.”

“Leave it out, Wally, will you,” Terry said. “I can do my own snatching.”

This gave Tommy and me the idea to cook one up for Walter. We persuaded Terry to write a letter to this Candy, then we showed it to Walter. Walter almost creamed himself. The benefactor at work. After Walter had read the letter I pretended to go off and post it. About a week later, while we were getting our grub, Tommy and I waited for Walter to come by.

“Here, Wally,” Tommy said, “that bird of yours wrote back to Terry.”

“She ain't,” said Wally.

“Yeah,” I said, “she sent him a load of nude photos.”

Wally's old eyes lit up.

“He hasn't half had a ruck to get them they're so strong,” Tommy said. “Only the rat won't bleeding well show us.”

“I saw the PO looking at them in his office, Wally,” I said. “It was coming out of his eyes.”

Terry timed it just right. He walked past us carrying a big envelope we'd buzzed from the office. He walked along the Twos and into his cell and then he came out again without the envelope and shut the door.

Wally did a real old fashioned double-take. Terry got his grub and we all went into the Twos TV room to eat.

After a while Walter said to Terry:

“Get a letter from Candy, then, did you, my old son?”

Terry didn't look up from his grub.

“That's right,” he said.

“Sent you some pictures, has she?”

Terry nodded and carried on eating.

“Don't we get a look, then?” I said.

“I've already told you,” Terry said. “No.”