‘Wrong? Every-stink’s fucking wrong!’ The Governor regards with hairy suspicion the rug of grey wool and grey bush: ‘No wonder the poor sods keep complaining ho being hungry … Wahhhhh!’
‘No need to swear. Hiss not my fault if the accountants are threatening to strike.’
‘Strike? Who said anything about a strike?’
‘They reckon topping prisoners lies outside their contracts of hem-ployment.’
‘Fiddle!’
‘They’re wanting money up front. Strictly on the nail per stiff.’ Stiff shoe shuffle, snowfall from fragged fringe of a grey rug, countering, ‘The Union wants a cut.’
‘Cut? Cut? Where do I keep hearing that?’
‘I’m sure Cheffy’s shaking his best.’
‘Best? You call mass starvation best? Good God!’
‘Chef reckons his he-conomies have saved you fowsands.’
‘Really? And wadder you think Amnesty fucking International will say when they suss how we make our economies?’
Stomach straining a Captain’s effort of steering a straight ship. Brain keeling a cesspool of pirate possibilities. None of which hauls a BEM or Duck of the Bath. Wrecked. Conspired against. What makes simple people steer for clear water? What terrible water sport ever sprung? A converted new new new Labour man. Detests blood sports. Gives to charities. And why isn’t Life fair? The Law of Averages dictates it should be some of the time.
Above all else why is it nobody listens? Really listens?
‘Now I’m forced to explain to that Bunch of Bleeding Hearts from the Home Office how we sustain two hundred flagship prisoners on the anorexic diet of a sparrow … Wahhhhh!’ Deep down. Deep down in a private pool of pity. And he doesn’t care one jimmy. ‘How am I to know? They all look the bloody same to me in their striped shirts …’ Slithering down. Deep down. Mud-brown sap sanitises the sewer pipes. ‘Feed the sods on pâté de foie gras for a month or roast ox stuffed with wood pigeon and you can soon spot the difference … Wahhhhh!’
‘Don’t let them get to you, sar. That’s what they want.’
‘Woe!’
‘Here. Have another.’
The Governor pleads to the barred window, to the wild potboiling tent of black. ‘Snumph! I promised Reverend Green hun Doctor Thunder Thighs I survive on the same pigswill!’
‘Sssh! There there. Don’t cry.’
‘I’m not crying.’
‘Yes you hiss.’
‘No I’m not. Dust — see — done.’
‘What you need is a holiday. Show ’em who’s boss.’
‘I’m the boss.’
‘Yes you hiss.’
‘Stuff ’em! Stuff ’em!’
‘Stuff ’em, sar.’
‘Stuff ’em!’ Driven by a desperation to stop Career, Big Job and gold-linked Pension nose-diving the Toilet Bowl of Life where Marriage has flushed, drenched with the cold truth that when Troubles anoint your crown they wouldn’t bother with anything less than a deluge, red devil drilling five-prong trident into the fore-lobes of the liver, he hogs the budget sheets steaming <—> ‘Stuff ’em!’
‘Stuff ’em, sar.’
‘Yes that’s what we’re gunner do — stuff ’em like prize turkeys.’
‘Hiss tat legal, sar?’
‘How many people know about this?’
‘Know about ...?’
‘This! This! The budget sheets!’
‘... ooer ... me ... you ...’
‘The accountants?’
‘... hack-count-ants ...’
‘Chef?’
‘... Chef ...’
‘But that’s my point. Don’t you see? No-one gives a stuff apart from the pen-pushers. And it’s not as if they count.’
The filthy creek backwaters of the brain flow catatonically. Don’t panic. See sense. You’re a highly trained Big Fish. ‘What are we forgetting?’
‘Our lunch, sar?’
‘The date, man! The date! Take your time.’
Blunkett buries a bulbous nose inside a black notebook … ‘The … sixteenth …’
‘The fifteenth, you blithering idiot. You know what this means?’
‘No, sar.’
‘Six days before I submit the half-year figures to Parliament ...’
‘Six, sar.’
‘... Six days to cook the books ...’
‘Cook the books.’
‘... Six days to blow a huge fucking mountain ho lovely lovely wonga!’
The shuffling and steaming and blowing of the bushy-tailed Blunkett upsetting the Governor’s karma. The delicate Ying and Young off to pot. ‘Stand up straight. Blithering.’
‘Sorry, sar.’
‘Spend! Spend! Spend! Spend like it’s the week before Judgment Day.’
‘Sar?’
‘Tell Chef to order venison ... grouse ... I want a hundredweight ... pheasant ... boar ... mmm and goats … Gimme goats.’
‘Ooo!’
‘Yes goats. Tell Chef ... tell Chef goats is the latest craze.’
Broadside the buttons of a bri-nylon shirt a black-cap finger rakes a barrel of blubber and Blunkett sniffs the finger up close — ‘Do you want lesser-spotted goats or bearded potbellies?’
‘Both.’
‘Ooo! Loverly!’
‘What do they eat off?’
‘Who? Goats?’
‘No, you idiot. The rotsit — prisoners.’
‘Oh um. Plastic dinner trays. With plastic knives and forks.’
‘Tell Chef to order gold cutlery. What else?’
‘How about fruit, sar? The men get that at Christmas.’
‘Excellent! Suet puddings. Lots and lots of suet puddings. Made of the best stuff. Real meat. Tell Chef to bump the courses to six ... no twelve ...’
♪ ‘Food glorious food ...’ ♫
‘... Tell the men they can have the day off tomorrow. To lounge about. Fatten up ...’
The happy Blunkett wets the end of a pencil.
‘... Beaujolais Nouveau ... twelve crates ... oysters ...’
The terrible tring-tring of the telephone (the devil’s implement) raises the drawbridge <—> liver pumps bad blood <—> drives a nine-inch nail through the cartilage of the eardrum <—>
‘Yes?’
‘Colin Hunt. Editor-in-Chief of the London Evening Trumpet. A word in your shell-like, Governor, about the slurry of rumour hot-sluicing Sleazy Street …’
***
The thigh may be thicker, blonde tail autumn straw, lips droop, verve loses its rev, but a Fräulein at forty can still turn heads, stomachs und other bits.
Mirror mirror on the wall,
Are there any fair Doctors out there at all?
Forty-one. Und a kleine. She hoofs flying — cadummmm! — the middle drawer of the filing cabinet with her soft white shoe.
She isn’t twisted about Life, but Life has a bitter edge.
Down the years she panned hopes of helping people. Freundlich Fräulein! Down the sluice sloops career like futsch.
How she longs to be back in the Black Forest where nobody shall find her.