Goatie 20

‘What’s the matter with you?’ she said when she came back. ‘You look a bit jumpy?’

 ‘Nae wonder, that was fucking weird.’

I was lying in bed, with the blanket loosely about me. I’d picked up Boner’s headphones and had them draped around my neck. I’d reached a new low. Looting dead bodies. I realised if I hadn’t been already locked up, I should have been.

‘I’ll take your blood-pressure, give you your meds and that’ll be me off for the weekend.’ She was upbeat and sounded cheerful. 

But I squirmed away from her when she put on the cuff. She didn’t seem to notice, sitting sideways on my bed, rubbing her thumb over my hand and flattening it out so my hand wasn’t clenched. Squeezing the bulb to inflate the cuff and jabbering on while adjusting the sphygmomanometer.

‘A bit high,’ she noted after deflating me and wrapping up her equipment. ‘But that’s to be expected.’

‘Aye, yeh could be right.’ I rubbed my wrist, bringing my arm back to life. ‘My cellmate dies. Yeh turn into a lizard. And yeh bring a voodoo priest tae dae an exorcism on me. Nae fuckin wonder, my blood pressures fuckin rocketin. Even fuckin worse, I find oot whit Boner was  listening tae.’ I picked up the wire dangling around my neck as evidence. ‘It wisnae Stone Roses, but Marie Osmond, Paper Fuckin Roses. Nae wonder he’d fuckin deid. He died o shame.’

She flinched but was professional enough not to show it. Wrapping up her kit. Storing it in proper bags. Her eyes flickering around the room to check that she hadn’t missed anything. ‘I was think you’re well enough to be taken back to your cell and mixing with the general prison population, but now I’m not so sure. Most prisons used to operate under the assumption you were bad or mad. Often a combination of both.’ Droopy Eyes stared at me. ‘In your case, I seriously think it’s the latter.’

‘Fuck off. I’d rather listen to Roses of the Paper variety.’ I put the buds of a dead man in my ear, but I couldn’t face the music. I wasn’t that sad.

She kept talking, justifying herself. ‘Cesare Lombroso, you’ve probably never heard of him. He liked to use pincers to measure skulls. Much the same as the Nazis did to measure certain characteristics associated with the Jew. We all know how that ended. For Lombroso it was simple. Epileptics like you were born degenerates and criminals. There was nothing you could do about it. You were born that way.’

‘Fuck off.’

She acted offended. ‘But there’s a happy ending for you. Lombroso was embraced in Britain by the great and not so good. Alongside prisons they built insane asylums, usually as an extension of the Workhouses.’

I couldn’t argue with her. ‘Yer very well informed.’ But before she acted smug, I added, ‘Whit did yeh bring the wee voodoo man here for?’

She chose her wording very carefully. ‘I didn’t bring him—as you say—he arrived. He’s a sad case. The wardens have a certain sympathy for him. He’s pretty harmless. And like many other elderly, he’s a touch of dementia. He shouldn’t really be here. He should be in hospital.’

I shoved up the bed and sat straighter. ‘Yeh mean, he’s no even a Proddy priest?’ I was mad at being duped. ‘Yeh mean he’s a prisoner, like the rest o us?’

She tilted her head and smiled. ‘Well, not like the rest of us.’ Sighing, she admitted, ‘Yes, he is a prisoner.’

‘Fuck me, no another child molester…An yer defending the cunt. That’s a fuckin disgrace.’

‘He’s not a child molester. He murdered his wife.’

‘That’s aw right then.’ I shook my head. ‘I mean that’s no awright. I mean if it was between me and my wife—well ex-actually—it would probably be her that would be daeing the murderin. No that that makes it awright.’

‘I can see why your wife might think that way. But Reverend Soutar’s wife was in such terrible pain she begged him to take her life.’

‘Aye, but he cannae dae that being a man o the cloth. Could he no take her tae hospital, or somethin?’

‘She’d been brought home from hospital. There was nothing they could do.’

‘Aye, but they must huv been able to dae somethin?’

‘They did. They sent her home to die. Made promises they couldn’t keep. Sound familiar?’

‘But he’s not meant tae dae that kinda hing. He’s a priest.’

He was a little more high-faulting than that. But never mind. He smothered her with a pillow.’

‘Fuck.’ I thought about it. ‘I couldnae smother mine wae a pillow. It’d need tae be a gun. Probably a machine gun.’

‘Can you not take anything serious?’

I closed my eyes and shook my head. Opening them again and peaking. ‘No really. She’s deid. He’s practically deid. Who really gi’es a fuck?’   

‘Well, he does, naturally. She was in so much pain, he took the decision to kill her. Knowing full well that he’s spend eternity in hell. If that wasn’t enough, he started seeing demons everywhere. You can’t not really feel sorry for him.’

‘I know…is it contagious?’

‘What do you mean?’