Introduction
This is the second story in a series I hope to write about life on an island group in the south of the Caribbean, about 100km off the South American coast. I first wrote about this Island in The Storm Spirits. There are a couple more stories yet to come.
“Gottvordomman,” Kass screamed, grabbing his jungentassa, the palm frond beach bag that all island boys carried, as he left the house, slamming the door behind him so hard that the glass in one of the panes cracked, joining the other cracked panes. Not that it was Kass’s fault that the other panes had cracked, though now he could understand his brother and his similar exit from the house two or was it three years ago. He hoped that God did damn them or at least that interfering preacher.
He had calmed down a bit by time he reached the gate that led to the road. Not much, but a bit. At least he did not slam the gate, which was probably a good job, the old hinges would probably not take that sort of treatment. But he was still angry and needed to work off some of the emotion that he was feeling, so he started to jog down the steep road that ran down the side of his mother’s property, then turned left to follow its frontage. As he made the turn to follow the road down the hill to the town and the beach beyond he heard his sister calling him. For a moment he stopped and looked up to his left, at the house perched on the steep hillside. Mara, his sister stood on the balcony, she had clearly been waiting for him to make the turn, telling him to come back, at least for the night, this was not a night to be out, that they could sort everything out in the morning.
Kass found it amusing. For all that his mother and sister had accepted the teaching of the mission church and rejected the traditions of the island, they still believed that tonight the spirits could take your body. They may say that Vadan and its teachings was the work of the Devil, but they did not deny its power. Neither, if he was honest with himself, did Kass, for he was a child of the Island. He knew the tales of the Storm Spirits and those of Tatanana, the goddess who was the volcano. Tonight though was the night of the Baron, he who would call those spirits of the dead who had not passed beyond to join him and party with the living. It was certainly not a night to be out. Anybody with any sense would be safely ensconced behind doors, with a candle burning to Tatanana.
Of course those who were somewhat more adventurous might choose different options. Many would gather together, believing in safety in numbers, to party the night away, hoping that the only spirits they came in contact with were those in a bottle. Then there were those who were not spoken of, who left the safety of their homes and climbed the jungled slopes of the volcano to hidden clearings where, well nobody quite knew what, was rumoured to take place.
He reached the main road and stood for a moment. Looking out towards the sea he could see that the sun was just touching the horizon. There was no way he could make it down to Low Town and then to Williamstown before dark, he would be hard pushed to make it down to the beach. Only a stomerling, an idiot would try to cross the causeway between the Big Island and Home Island in the dark.
Inwardly he cursed himself for being so stupid, this had been building up for weeks now, why had he let it come to a head tonight, Dodenfeest, the Feast of the Dead. He could have walked out any time in the last three weeks, he had made his mind up that he would during the first week of the month. Just after his mother had first brought Brother Schmit over to preach to him about the evil of the island boys’ ways. The good pastor had learnt some Creole words that day that he would not find in the dictionary – not that anyone had got round to writing a dictionary for the island's Creole. Today the preacher had learnt even more, telling him that he had a choice, either accept the church or leave home, well Kass had made his choice.
Rather than taking the road down towards the causeway Kass cut across it and started down a steep path that went down to the sea, a good four hundred metres below. It was a difficult descent and not one to be attempted at speed, but manageable with a bit of care and it was a path Kass knew well. It led down to a small, almost hidden, bay with its beach of black sand. Island boys would gather there during the summer days to swim in its warm waters, safe in the knowledge that the reef that almost blocked its entrance protected them from the more dangerous large inhabitants of the Carib Seas. It was also a popular place for the inshore fishermen, whose shallow drafted canoes could just top the reef at high tide, for it was well protected from the storms that at times hit this part of the world. Of course those fishermen, now in their twenties and thirties had once been island boys and enjoyed the same games that the island boys played in and around the waters of the bay.
Not that there would be any fishermen there now, the recent storms and the coming of the hurricane season had moved the fishing to the far side of the Big Island. Nor would there be any of the island boys, for school was back now and the trek from the centres of population to this bay was longer than most could allow on a school day. Also they would not want to be out on this night, not after the sun had set.
Of course, there would be some of the older boys, boys of his age, who Kass knew would sneak out of their homes after dark, climbing through bedroom windows and up into the jungled slopes of Tatanana. They would be listening for the sounds that would lead them to those special places, to those secret rites and rituals which the servants of the Baron this night performed.
Although Kass had never left the house after sunset before on the Dodenfeest, he had often sat with his window open listening, hoping to hear the sounds of the hidden rites. He had never heard anything, nor had anyone he knew. Some said that no one followed the old ways now and that the Baron had no followers. Kass was not sure he wanted to test that speculation. He knew the stories of those who had wondered onto the jungle sloops of Tatanana on the night of the Dodenfeest and been found the next morning wandering, mindless or worse, exhausted, along the beach. Those who told the old tales said that the spirits called by the Baron could take over a man’s body on this night, and use it to party all night doing unspeakable acts in the conduct of the Dodenfeest, the Feast of the Dead.
One thing Kass was certain was that he might be out of the house this night but he certainly did not mean to sleep outside without cover. There was a fisherman’s shelter down at the bay. Not much, but it was a roof to keep off the rain and walls to keep out the wind. So what if there was no glass in the windows, there were shutters that closed over them. Most importantly there was a hearth where he could set a fire. It was a place a fisherman could laze in the shade of the overhung roof above the porch and watch their fish drying in the afternoon sun. It was where Kass intended to pass the night.
The sun was nearly set as he emerged from the thick shrubbery that edged the black sands. Kass sprinted across them to the top end of the beach were the shelter stood. The door was on the catch. He pulled the string and then pushed it open. The inside of the shelter was dark, the shutters being up and closed. He stepped in, leaving the door open so he could use the last of the day’s light he crossed the bare room to the hearth.
Something moved, a shape within the darkness of the room and, taking on the form of a boy, dashed towards the door. Kass reached out and grabbed for it, catching a wrist and pulling the boy into the light from the door. “Lemme go!” It shouted, pulling its arm violently from Kass’s grasp before shooting out of the door, into the growing darkness beyond. Kass stood for a moment, more in surprise than anything, the image of the boy’s face filling his mind. He could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen at the most, he had the tanned skin of one of the English who lived on the island, sun bleached blond hair with grey-blue eyes that were full of terror. The boy was scared and this night was no place for a scared boy to be out on his own, especially not one of the English boys, they knew not the ways of the island.
Kass left the shelter and looked around but there was no sign of the boy. Then in the final light of the setting sun he glimpsed a track of footprints leading up the beach to the jungled slopes of Tatanana. For a moment he thought of going after him but it was no use, soon the vestiges of twilight would fade from the sky. Once dark there was no way Kass would find him in the jungle. Tonight was not a night to be out after dark.
As the twilight faded Kass made his way back to the shelter. In the feeble fading light that made its way in through the door Kass managed to find his jungentassa and extract his lighter. As always there was dry kindling by the hearth and a pile of driftwood for the burning. Kass placed some kindling in the hearth and applied flame to it, then placed some of the smaller pieces of wood on top. Once the flame had taken he piled on more wood, then went and shut the shelter door.
The flickering flames of the fire cast a red glow throughout the small shelter. The hearth had never been intended for light or heat, it was there for when the fishermen had wanted to cook fish or boil water for cha. Kass wished he had a candle with him. He was not sure that the fire would burn all night. It was, however, the only source of flame he had in the room so it would have to do.
Carefully he knelt down before the hearth and in the fine ash in front of the fire he started to draw a shape. As he drew the five lines of the sigil of protection he chanted an invocation to Tatanana, the goddess of the volcano, the Mother of Fire. The words he chanted were little more than a jumble of sounds, for they were the remains of a language long gone, which no academic had recorded or even noted its passing. Kass knew not what they meant, for their meaning was lost soon after the first Dutch merchantmen had been marooned on the Home Island’s coast. However, he knew their purpose and the protection they drew from the Mother of Fire.
Given that the outside temperature was in the mid-twenties, the fire, small though it be, quickly heated the shelter to a temperature which was above being pleasant. Kass found himself sweating profusely and wishing he could open the door or the window shutters. That, though, was not an option this night.
He pulled his shirt off over his head, then pushed down his shorts and stepped out of them, to stand naked in the glow of the fire. He picked up the garments from the floor and draped them over one of the lines strung under the roof of the shelter. He pulled a rough towel out of his jungentassa to wipe the perspiration from his body. He had the firm taut body of an island boy, seventeen years of island life had formed him. Seventeen years that had taken him from crawling on the black sands to swimming in the seas, climbing for coconuts and running the steep paths of the mountain slopes. It was a body the Phidias would have been glad to use for a model when carving the youth of Athens on the Parthenon.
Kass knew he had a good body. He had seen the way that the men and other boys looked at him and knew that they liked what they saw. More than one had approached him with offers of more than friendship but Kass had not yet taken a lover. Though by the ways of the island he was old not to have done so. Most island boys had taken a partner from amongst the older teens or even from the younger men by time they had turned sixteen. Amongst the people of the island such relationships were, if not approved of, generally tolerated, for it was known that if hormone raged young males satisfied their lust amongst themselves they did not pressure the girls to oblige.
He reached into his jungentassa and pulled out a length of cloth, wrapping it around himself like a sarong. Before he got to work he put a couple more pieces of driftwood on the fire, then he emptied out the contents of his jungentassa. Laying them out carefully on the ground, then from the bottom of the bag he pulled out a thick wad of stiff folded cloth. A boy's jungentassa was his survival tool. Each boy made their own, gathering the palm fronds from the tree to weave into a strong bag. In the old days the fact that a boy could climb the palm to cut the fronds for his jungentassa was a sign he was old enough to leave the women’s world and join the men moving into the men’s lodge and joining their societies.
The missionaries had brought an end to the men’s lodges, though some of the societies still existed, those societies the missionaries approved of. It was said that other societies also still existed and they met up the slopes, in places the missionaries never went. Though the men’s lodges were no more, many a couple of young bachelors would share a hut, sometimes even three or four of them, living and working together until some girl put out a mat for one of them.
Not that Kass looked for any girl to be putting out a mat for him. He knew what he was and what he wanted. Kass wanted a youth like himself. Though that was not as easy as it might sound.
Unfolding the cloth, Kass laid it out on the floor. It was just over two metres in length. Along the ends of the cloth there was a heavily stitched seam into which a number of large eyelet holes had been punched. Kass unknotted and removed one of the rope handles from his jungentassa then, once he had untwisted the doubled rope, threaded it through the holes. He repeated the process with the other handle at the other end of the cloth. He pulled the ropes at each end and tied them off into loops using good secure knots. Knot tying was something all island boys learnt early on. Insecure knots could end up being painful. Once that was done he looped the rope at one end of the cloth over a large hook in one of the roof support posts, then repeated the process with the loop at the other end. Now the cloth hung as a hammock between the two support posts. One thing island boys learnt early on was never sleep on the ground. Not that there was anything particularly dangerous on the island but things like land crabs tended to come out at night and could give you a nasty nip.
Even if you were just lazing a couple of hours away in the afternoon listening to the surf, being off the ground was a good idea. Every island boy who had made his jungentassa had in it something he could use to form a hammock; he would often need it. Either to sleep in, safe above the ground, or spread out above them providing shade from the tropical sun.
Kass looked at the fire and estimated it would burn for a good couple of hours, so he set the alarm on his wristwatch for two hours, then heaved himself into the hammock. The heat in the shelter combined with the relief from the stress he had been under most of the day, caught up with him. The moment he lay back in the hammock he found himself feeling drowsy, watching the flickering shapes on the roof of the shelter from the firelight soon sent him to sleep.
Two hours later his watched bleeped the alarm for him to feed the fire. In the depth of his sleep Kass rolled within his hammock, half woke, and cancelled the alarm, before drifting back to sleep. The fire went out.
Kass opened his eyes, the moonlight reflected off the sea and in through the open door of the shelter. The drumm, da, da, drumm of a distant beat filled his head. He swung out of his hammock, his sarong falling to the floor as he did, and stepped towards the door. To close it? He did not know. Why was it open? Kass knew he had closed it and tied it shut. Kass knew it but it was open and before it a silver path shone across the black sands. Kass stepped through the door, he knew he shouldn’t but he had no choice, the drums demanded it.
Step by step the drums pulled him across the beach and into the jungle, they pulled him to a path he did not know, which led upwards through the thick vegetation of the mountain slopes. Though narrow the path was clearly well used, which puzzled Kass. He had roamed these slopes for years and had never come across the path. He could not work out why. There was not an inch of the west side of Tatanana that Kass would have said he did not know but now he found himself walking up a path that he did not know to a place he did not know.
The drumming got louder as the vegetation started to thin out. As it did Kass got the impression of others moving through the brush. Each seemed to be following their own path to wherever it was they were going. Kass was puzzled, this just did not make sense, there could not be that many paths leading up the slopes of Tatanana which he did not know about.
He wanted to turn, to run away, to be anywhere except where he was, but there was something, something he did not understand, that kept drawing him onwards, up the slope to the source of the drumming. As he moved through the vegetation he started to see figures and shapes ahead of him and the flickering of firelight. Hands reached out for him, pulling him forward, drawing him towards the flames and the sound of the drums.
Bodies pressed against him, pushing him forwards. As they did hands caressed him rubbing his body with thick greasy cream that seemed to soak into his very pores bringing his skin to life with sensations he had never known. He was no longer on the path but in a wide open area below high cliffs, that was filled with people, all of whom were swaying and stomping to the sound of the drums that came from the direction of the fire. There were no individuals here, just a mass of naked people, moving as a mass. Body against body, hands seeking and finding, touching and feeling, exploring and knowing.
Confusion and elation filled Kass. He had never experienced anything like this. Part of him was filled with terror, the other filled with excitement, as the bodies of the men and boys that surrounded him pushed in on him. He had not looked but somehow he knew that in this mass there were only males – males like himself.
A hand came up across his chest, pushing him on the shoulder, forcing him to turn. The face before him was that of a boy from his class at school. Their oiled bodies came together, pressed into each other by the press of bodies around them. Their eyes met, each acknowledging the lust that was rampant in the other, lips touched and hands took hold, then the press of bodies around them forced them apart as the stomping mass moved onwards in a circular motion around an unseen centre.
Suddenly the drumming stopped, the whole mass of bodies turned inward to look into the circle. Kass found himself looking in from behind a single line of bodies, more bodies pressed up against him from the behind. Suddenly he realised where he must be. Behind the level area around which they had been dancing soared steep cliffs. This must, Kass deduced, be the north side of the island. But there was no way he could have made it here from the beach where he had been but here he was.
Four flaming torches, set on high poles, cast their light into the cleared circle that the dancers surrounded. In the middle of it two men obscenely rubbed their hands and pressed their cocks against the body of a younger male who squirmed around, apparently sitting on the top of a flat topped rock in the centre of the circle. Each man in turn would step up onto the rock and place his penis against the youth’s face, grinding it into the face until the boy took it into his mouth. As he watched Kass experienced a shock of recognition, the boy on the rock was a senior from his school, only a few months older than Kass. What surprised Kass was that this was a island boy who had despised and rejected the ways of the island boys, yet here he was in the midst of an homoerotic orgy.
A single drum started with a low rumbling sound with no distinct beat but a constant swelling and diminishing of volume. The bodies around Kass started to sway to some rhythm that was not heard, just sensed. Kass felt a body press hard up against his back, a hand reaching round and taking hold of his manhood. His own hands reached out to touch and feel the bodies around him, finding and holding hard cock as he and those around him watched the scene at what Kass knew was an altar in the centre of the circle.
A deep groan escaped the lips of the youth as his body spasmed. His engorged penis throbbed visibly and shot forth his seed. Then with a long moan the boy collapsed, only prevented from falling by the two men on each side. They took hold of his body each placing a hand under his armpit and lifted him up. As his body was raised from the squatting position it was in, Kass observed that there was a stone phallus set on the rock, upon which the youth had been impaled.
As the two men half carried and half dragged the youth from the rock altar a gale of laughter erupted from beyond the circle. The far side of the circle opened to allow a passageway into the centre and the drumming resumed, this time to a separate beat. A beat to which those around the circle swayed and jolted, the press of their bodies not allowing the wild dancing that this rhythm demanded.
The laughter erupted once more from the darkness beyond the circle and then a laughing figure leaped through the open passageway into the circle of light, spinning and leaping madly to the beat of the drumming. Dressed only in a tail coat and top hat with a skull topped stick the white faced apparition leapt upon the altar. The drums stopped. There was total silence for a moment. Slowly the figure turned casting its glare around the circle of bodies, each member of which felt that it was looking directly at him and seeing into his soul. At that point Kass knew that this was the Baron, the Lord of the Dead.
The Baron reached down with his free hand and took hold of his member, stroking it in long languid strokes. Once more the drums started, Kass felt the bodies round him press in tighter in expectation. Turning the Baron raised his stick and pointed at the opening in the circle, then motioned for something to be brought in. Soon two men, their oiled naked bodies gleaming in the flickering light, appeared in the gap dragging a smaller figure between them. As they stepped into the circle Kass saw that the figure between them was the English boy he had seen earlier in the shelter. Even with the drumming and the murmuring of the bodies pressed together around the circle, Kass could hear or more correctly sense, the whimpering of the boy.
The two men who had been with the youth on the altar before now reappeared. Both carried knives as they walked forward towards the small figure. As they approached the two holding the boy moved apart, holding him tightly by his wrists so that stretched out between them. The two knife wielders stepped up close to him, on slightly in front of him the other behind the boy. A look of terror filled the boy’s face, the Baron laughed. The knives slashed and hands pulled, cutting and ripping the clothing off the boy. For a moment he was held there naked as the knife wielders stepped away. Then they returned having replaced their knives with small bowls into which they dipped their hands before applying them to the boy’s body in the most intimate fashion, oiling it up and making it shine in the flickering light.
The Baron laughed, throwing his stick high into the air with his right hand, leaping off the altar, then catching it with his left as he stepped forward towards the English boy. He stepped in close, rubbing his penis against the boy’s body and reaching forward to tweak his nipple. Then, stepping aside, the Baron pointed at the altar and the stone phallus sitting upright upon it. The men stepped in taking hold of the boy by his arms and legs and started to carry him forward. An inarticulate cry of terror rose from the boy.
A horrified cry of “NO” sounded in the mass of bodies around circle. Kass wondered where it could have come from until he realised it was his cry as he pushed those in front of him to the side and ran forward across the circle. He got to the altar just before the men arrived with the struggling boy. In a bound he was standing atop the altar grabbing the stone phallus by its head and swinging it like a club that he aimed at the man on the left of the boy. The man released the boy, bringing his arms up to defend himself from the blow as he ducked beneath the arc of the phallic club. The boy fell to the ground, his weight pulling down the other man, who Kass kicked in the head as he leapt down from the altar.
Kass grabbed the boy’s arm dragging him to his feet, then pulling him by his feet commanded him: “Run”. The boy needed no encouragement. He ran with Kass, through the gap in the crowd round the circle, following a path that neither could see but which Kass just knew was there. As they ran they heard the laughter of the Baron behind them and a howl of anger from the crowd of bodies round the circle.
Kass did not stop to check where they were running, all he knew was that they had to run. Suddenly he realised where he was and where they must go. “Follow me,” he told the boy, leading him up the steep slope of Tatanana, leading him towards the lava fields. Behind them the drumming took on a different beat. Within him Kass knew that beat was the beat of the hunt.
Pain filled Kass’s legs and he found he was labouring to get his breath but still he ran. Glancing to his side he saw the boy was just behind him. It was clear to Kass from what he saw the boy could not go on much further, but then neither could Kass. In front of him the moonlight caught the distant sea. Kass stopped sharply, turning to catch and stop the English boy running behind him. The force of the boy’s impact almost knocked Kass over, but he was prepared for it, picking the boy up and swinging him round to dissipate the energy in his forward momentum. They came to a standstill facing each other, Kass’s arms around the English boy.
“Why have we stopped?” the boy asked.
“Because there was no more land”, Kass replied, indicating with his head the cliff edge a few feet ahead of them.
“Shit!”
“It would have been if we had gone over,” Kass replied, carefully sticking to English and not falling into Creole. They could hear the drums drumming in the distance. In the light of the moon Kass saw the look of terror on the boy’s face. “Follow me but be careful, there is a nasty drop if you make a mistake.” He led the way along the edge of the cliff trying to find the fissure he knew was there. At the same time he puzzled as to how he came to be there as they were on the west side of the island, well away from where the rites had been and Kass was sure he had not been running that long or run that far. In fact Kass was certain that there was no way he could have run that far, he was not that good a runner. A short sprint he could manage but this was more like ten kilometres over rough ground, a lot of it in jungle. Then it hit Kass, he could not remember running through jungle but to have got here he must have done, unless they had run over the crater of Tatanana. Just as he was thinking that, he got to the fissure in the rock. It was about two metres wide and went inland from the cliff face a good thirty or forty metres. In the dark it looked deep but Kass knew it was only about three metres to the bottom and that would give access to a ledge along the cliff face. Carefully he lowered himself down into the fissure, making sure of his foothold in the rock face before helping the English boy to climb down.

I had first met Ann when I was taken as a guest to the Gateways Club off the Kings Road. It was a lesbian club, but men were allowed in as guests at Sunday lunchtime. At the time I had been volunteering at a gay advice centre and somebody had the bright idea that the male volunteers should know something about the lesbian scene and the women should know about the queer scene. In those days both men and women identified as gay, they were either lesbian or queer. LGBT was going to come along later. The plus came a lot later.
It turned out that Ann was something at the Palace. Exactly what was not made clear. It was to be a couple of years before I found out that she worked in the press office. I never did find out which member of the royal family she was assigned to. In the twelve odd years that I was in contact with her she never said anything about the going-ons in the Palace. In that respect she was the soul of discretion.
In other matters she was the biggest gossip going and if there was any gossip going around in the London gay scene you could be sure Ann would know it. If she did not, then she would probably invent it.
One of the problems of being gay in the early seventies was that one could not, acceptably, take one's partner to one of the many social events which society deemed one should attend. You were expected to be accompanied by a member of the opposite sex. It was, therefore, incumbent on one to arrange a suitable partner to attend such events.
During our first meeting at the Gateway Club, Ann mentioned that she was expected to attend the opening of an exhibition by an up-and-coming young artist, who it turned out was related to her. The exhibition was taking place at an avant-garde gallery, which was only a few hundred yards from the advice centre where I volunteered a couple of times a week.
"Should be a good show," Diana, at whose table we were sitting, stated. "Probably will be but doubt if I will be able to go," Ann stated.
"Why not?" I asked.
"It's a black-tie affair. Do you know any gay boys who have a tuxedo?"
"Yes, I have," I replied. Of course, I had a tuxedo, I was a magician. At least part-time, when I not doing photography or selling my body. The later two were how I made a living, magic was very much a hobby, which sometimes generated a bit of an income, but never enough to cover the expenses.
Ann looked at me in disbelief. "Really?"
"Yes, he has," Blackie said. "I had to go and see him in a magic show a few weeks ago, he was wearing it."
"You do magic?" Diana asked. "I thought you were a photographer."
"Part-time photographer, part-time magician," I stated. I could have added full-time whore, but thought it best not to. "Whatever is paying." Blackie gave me a look when I said that. There were times I suspected she knew more about me than was good.
"What are you doing on Thursday?" Ann asked.
"Don't know, depends on what work comes in. I'm covering at the centre two to four," I informed her. Unless I had some photographic work on, I never got up till gone eleven, so normally never did any of the early shifts at the centre.I also preferred not to do the evening shifts, they made it difficult to meet up with potential clients in the pubs. The men in the clubs paid more but the pub guys were much more regular customers. Also, if you worked it right, you could pick up a customer in a pub in the early evening, service them and still get to one of the clubs by ten, where you could get picked up by one of the high rollers. Of course, you had to be careful in the pubs, there were often coppers around in plain clothes. You better make sure the punter approaches you, otherwise you could get done for soliciting.
"Good," Ann stated. "You can escort me to the opening. The reception starts at eight, so we should arrive about half past eight."
"Isn't that a bit early?" Diana asked.
"I'm a relative, darling, not a film star like you. I can't do fashionably late. If I'm late they proceed without me."
"Wish I could say the same," Diana stated.
"Anyway ah…. What's your name?"
It was at that point that Blackie got around to introducing us.
After that, arrangements were made for me to meet Ann on Thursday evening at seven forty-five. The agreed meeting place was Leicester Square tube station. Ann and I then got on to discussing magic, which it appeared was also an interest of hers. So much so that I agreed to meet up with her on Tuesday so we could visit the studio of Martin Breese, the magic dealer.
The Tuesday visit did not take place. Ann met me at lunch time as arranged but apologised that she had not been able to get the afternoon off, as had been planned. There was a bit of a brouhaha at the palace and all the press staff had been called in.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"I've no idea," Ann replied. "Though word is that Prince Phillip is on the war path, which is never a good sign."
We had lunch in Leicester Square and then Ann returned to the palace, and I went off to spend money I had not got.
On Thursday I was at the assigned meeting place at the agreed time. Ann arrived a few minutes later, looking gorgeous in a dark blue evening dress. She admitted to me later that it was (a) by Dior and (b) on loan to her from a minor member of the royal family.
I escorted her the few hundred yards from our meeting place to the gallery where the reception was being held. Ann had our invitation in her clutch bag. Actually, it was her invitation, I was merely along as her 'and companion'. As we approached the entrance to the gallery, she handed me the invitation, which I handed to the functionary at the door without looking at it. He took it, examined it, then handed it to the footman who stood inside the door, indicating at the same time that we could enter. As we did the footman announced our arrival. To be more precise, he announced Ann's arrival. Though I found out at that point that Ann was not Ann and that she had a title. I was, of course, announced as the companion.
Once inside and supplied with a glass of champagne, Ann informed me that Ann was actually the second of her middle names and the title was a courtesy one, she being the third daughter of a member of the British aristocracy. She also made it clear that further questions would not be appreciated.
Not that I really had chance to ask any further questions as a young man, who I presumed was the artist, due to the fact that he was not in formal evening wear, dashed across, grabbed hold of Ann, kissed her on both cheeks, before dragging her off to the other side of the gallery, leaving me standing by the buffet. A fact that I was not complaining about. Free food is free food, even if it is served in mouth-sized portions. I proceeded to graze.
"You must be a companion," a young man, also involved in consuming a sizeable portion of the buffet, stated.
"Yes," I replied, looking up from the plate of food I had managed to load up. I guessed he was in his early twenties, some three or four years older than me. Good looking in that rugged blond way.
"Same here. I'm David by the way," he replied, the drawl on the here emphasising his upper-class origins and education. I introduced myself.
David continued. "My cousin Rachel drags me along to these events." He made them sound awfully dull.
"You could always refuse," I pointed out.
"No way. Daddy's got the title, so it'll come to me. Rachel's daddy's got the dosh. Millions of it. He's my godfather. With a bit of luck, he'll remember me when he pops it. All I have to do is keep his only daughter happy.
"Who are you with?"
I told him, he laughed.
"What's so funny?" I asked.
"You're with HRH, she's my sister."
"HRH?"
"Yes, she was always ruling over us in the nursery. She rules over us even now. It's Ann who's fitted me up to escort Rachel around in the first place. Can't complain though. She gets me in places where the title never would and she picks up the bill."
"What happens when she marries?"
"That's not on the cards. She's not interested in cock unless it's on a bloody stallion. Not like me." The latter was said with a suggestive look that made his interests clear. I made my professional status clear to him and despite his indications of poverty, he was more than happy to accept my terms. We consumed our food with some gusto, then occupied one of the cubicles in the gallery's toilets for the next forty minutes or so. After which arrangements were made for me to meet him the following weekend for a somewhat more relaxed and lucrative, for me, session. My relationship with David was to last longer than my escorting duties for Ann.
When we did emerge from our sojourn in the bowels of the gallery, I found Ann deep in conversation with a grey-haired woman who, I estimated, was in her late fifties or early sixties.
"It's a truly remarkable and innovative collection," she was informing Ann. "So, different, so enlightened. The subtle use of colour and shade is…"
At that point she seemed to run out of words. Having looked around the gallery I could have provided a few: messy, sploggy, vomit-inducing daubs, all fit. However, I thought it best not to mention any of them.
Ann gave me a look, the type of look that said one thing. Get me out of here. I glanced at my watch; it was twenty to ten.
"Ann darling," I said, as I sidled up to the pair of them, "we do have a table booked for ten."
"Christ, sorry Aunt Jane, I forgot. I'll catch up with you next time I am down your way." With that, Ann grabbed my arm, and we made an exit.
"Your aunt?" I asked. "The artist's mother."
"My aunt yes, the artist's mother, no."
"Oh, I thought you said he was your cousin," I stated.
"He is, unfortunately," Ann responded. "Aunt Louise is his mother. She's got the sense never to be able to attend his exhibitions, always seems to be out of the country when they're on. That was Aunt Jane, my father's other sister. She is the one that discovered Peter's talent. Unfortunately, she has the funds to foster it."
"Why?" I asked.
"Well, she is part-owner of the gallery. She married young to a rich American. He died tragically young. Fortunately, he left her a fortune. Unfortunately, she's been spending it for the last forty years promoting young artists. The thing is the fortune is so big that it is earning more than she spends.
"Aunt Jane insists that Peter has a remarkable talent. All the up-and-coming young artists agree with her, because they want to exhibit in her gallery."
"Remarkable! I can understand, talent I find difficult to appreciate," I commented.
"I've found it remarkable difficult to appreciate, when it comes to Peter's art," Ann responded. "I've seen better stuff produced by five-year-olds."
"That's what is remarkable," I stated in defence of my position. "It's remarkable that somebody his age can actually paint worse than a five-year-old."
"Or a two-year-old," Ann responded. "Let's grab a pint before they bloody close."
That was the first time I escorted Ann to an event. Over the next couple of years, I was her regular escort when she needed a male to attend her. It was not a frequent activity on my part. Sometimes I could go weeks without hearing from Ann, other times I might find myself escorting her to three events in a week.
Even when circumstances were such that I found it advisable not to be in London, I would still get a phone call from Ann asking me to come down for the evening and escort her somewhere or other. Film premiers, first nights and orchestral performances seemed to make up the majority of our times out together, though I did accompany her to a couple of society weddings.
By this time, I had known Ann for about five years and had met a number of her family members. I had become so much of a fixture as Ann's escort to various functions that I was now often invited by name. It being presumed that if Ann was there, I would be her escort. This was particularly true of the Dowager Countess, who was either Ann's grandmother or her great aunt. I never quite established which but opted in the main for grandmother. The problem was everybody addressed her as My Lady. They also seemed to be in perpetual fear of her.
It was after I had met the Dowager Countess a couple of times that my name started to appear on invitations. Something which surprised me somewhat, to such an extent that I mentioned it at one point to the Dowager Countess as I returned to her bearing a plate loaded with edibles from the buffet which I had collected in accordance with her instructions.
"Of course, you're included on invitations," she stated with emphasis. "I need somebody intelligent to speak to. All this lot can talk about is horses and shooting."
"What makes you think I'm intelligent?" I asked.
"Anyone who can get here from the Black Country must be intelligent," she stated. "It's not easy. I know."
I looked at the Dowager Countess in surprise.
She smiled. "There's not much of an accent. If you did not know it, you would miss it. Elocution lessons?"
"Speech therapy for ten years," I replied.
"Just as good and quite effective," she commented. "I had elocution for four."
"Why?"
"Dis is bustin ain't it," she replied in a very low voice. I looked surprised.
"Moxley," she continued, back with a normal voice. "Got out at 14 in 1920, joined a variety dance troop, ended up at the Gaiety theatre. Met my first husband, an American millionaire. I was his third wife, I quickly found out why his first two had left him. He loved fast cars and fast women. We were on track for a divorce before we got off the Leviathan in New York. Fortunately, for me, his love of fast cars was too much for him. He had brought a Hispano Suize over with him on the Leviathan. Five days after we arrived, he crashed it, fatally. So, I came back to England sans husband but with a fortune.
"Unfortunately, for an 18-year-old girl, even one with a fortune, a husband was a necessity in those days. I was a rich widow without a husband and the Earl was an old title without an income. We got on very well. I gave him the required two sons and a daughter. I also turned a blind eye to his friendship with the coachman. On the whole, we had a perfect arrangement."
I laughed, the Dowager Countess joined in the laughter, then guided me to a quiet corner of the room.
"Now, tell me your story," she instructed.
I did. It seemed we had a lot in common. So much so that I was kept on the invitation list while she was alive. Even after I had stopped escorting Ann.
It was a society wedding which caused the problem. One of Ann's cousins, she seemed to have no end of them, was getting married on the Tuesday at a West End church. Unfortunately, Princess Anne was getting married the following day at Westminster Abbey. Ann, of course, had invitations to both. However, I was only required for the one. Not the one at Westminster Abbey.
By this time, I was back living in the Black Country trying to make a living flogging questionable antiques. My escorting of Ann, therefore, required that I went down to London. Fortunately, she covered the expenses. Unfortunately, there was a rail dispute on, and I arrived later than expected at the hotel where I was booked for two nights. Normally when I came down, I stayed at the Bedford on Southampton Row; this time, no doubt due to the royal wedding, no rooms were available at that establishment. I had though managed to get into a place not far away, which was supposed to be somewhat upmarket.
The thing was I had arranged to meet David at four for a bit of entertainment in my room at the hotel. Well, one has to earn what you can where you can and the trade in questionable antiques was not that good. There was a distinct lack of gullible American tourists in Wednesbury.
The combination of the train delay and an inexplicable shortage of taxis at Euston meant that was nearly four by time I got to the hotel. I was, therefore, somewhat annoyed to find, when I got to reception, that there was no room for me. Apparently, there had been a mix up over bookings. The desk clerk was very sorry, but there was nothing they could do. She did inform me that they had tried to find a room for me in the other hotels in the group, but there were none available.

Mr Morris looked at the seven bags of property that had arrived with me from Her Majesty’s Prison Albany. It was not so much that there were seven bags of stuff that caused a problem, it was the time. It was well past seven o’clock and lockdown was at eight. He looked at his watch. “Richards, can we sort this tomorrow?”
“Of course, Mr Morris,” I did not tell him that I intended to hand out five of the bags to my visitors as soon as a visiting order could be arranged. I would have had a visit the following day at Albany, and the bags would have been handed out then, but somebody had the bright idea of transferring me to HMP Leicester for local release eight weeks before I was due to get out. “But I do need that one.” I indicated the smallest of the bags.
“Ok, we’ll sort your property card out in the morning.”
I nodded in agreement. Mr Morris and I went back some time. He was the first prison officer I met after my committal on remand; he was on reception duty when I arrived at the prison. Now he was a Senior Officer. In the eighteen months I had been on remand here he had been my Personal Officer so I had got to know him quite well. He had arranged for me to be Seg Cleaner, without doubt one of the cushiest jobs in the prison. That was a lifetime ago, though.
Actually it was only six and a half years, but it felt like a lifetime, and for all intents and purposes it may as well have been. Nothing was left of my old life; it had all been lost. The partner of over fifteen years, who said he would wait for me, managed to wait all of six months. I couldn’t I blame him; in truth I was surprised that he lasted that long. At least he stayed in touch, which is more than a lot of my friends did. The business that had taken me twenty years to build up lasted about as many months after my arrest; people supposedly acting in my best interests managed to fuck it up totally, and that fucked up my pension at the same time. So, here I was, a few months short of sixty, facing release and… nothing.
At least I managed to keep myself busy in prison. More important, I kept my mind active. The biggest threat in prison, especially if you were over forty, was shutting down; I most definitely avoided that. I played the prison game for all it was worth, taking advantage of every educational course that was available to me. Prisons like to show that they are educational and the more passes they can show the better, so the education department found it useful to have a number of high achievers sitting around doing degrees or post docs who they could call in to make up numbers on exams. In my five years down on the island I had taken both the numeracy competence and literacy competence exams about eight times.
I had also completed a degree and was in now my final semester of a post graduate diploma, which was why I was in something of a bad mood about being shipped out so far in advance of my release. There was no way I would be able to finish my assignments up at Leicester prison, where you were not allowed even a word processor, never mind a laptop, for course work. My first act once I got to the pad they were putting me in would be to write to my course supervisor explaining the situation and asking for an extension.
Exacerbating my bad mood was the realisation that I would be sharing a cell. After over five years of having a pad of my own, I was not looking forward to having a cellmate.
I grabbed the one bag of stuff that I really needed and hoisted it onto my shoulder. Mr Lynch, who I also knew from my remand period, took me over to the unit and showed me to a cell. He opened the door and told the lad lying on the left-hand bed that he had a new pad mate. Well, that was one good thing; the cell had beds rather than bunks. It was a bit cramped but at least it avoided having to scramble up into a bunk at night. There was a basic prison rule: whoever got in last took the top bunk. At my age that could be a problem.
Walking past Mr Lynch I dumped my bag and bedroll on the unoccupied bed. He asked me if I needed anything, so I told him I had to get some hot water, as I looked in my bag for my flask.
“Things ’ave changed a bit since you were ’ere last. You’ve got a kettle.” He pointed towards the bench by the side of the TV, then shut the cell door.
No matter how long you’ve been inside, there is something about that final clunk of the bolt as it shoots home that gets to you. I’ve spoken to lifers who have done twenty or thirty years and are looking at doing as long again, and they all say it still gets to them. It is almost as if the locks have been deliberately engineered to make that clunk as the bolt is shot, just to remind you of where you are and why.
Turning, I took a look at the lad lying on the other bed. He was wearing only boxers, allowing me a good look at his body, though it was not that much of a body but not too bad. One glance showed that he was a user and that the drugs had taken their toll on him.
Age-wise he could have been anywhere from twenty to forty, but I guessed about he was about thirty. It was difficult to assess ages inside. You’d come across lads who looked like they were in their mid-twenties and behaved like teenagers, only to find out that they were forty-five and had already served twenty years. Then there were the old lags you took for sixty and you found out they were thirty and only in the second year of a five-year stretch.
I held my gaze on my cellmate for a few moments. A look of apprehension, then fear, moved across his face. He pulled himself up, scrunching back against the low partition at the head of his bed that separated off the toilet area. He drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, his eyes pleading to be left alone. It was a fear I had seen a lot in the previous six-odd years. The last thing I wanted was a pad mate who was terrified of me, and whose behaviour therefore might be unpredictable.
“Which is your locker?” I asked, there being two lockers in the cell, both at the end of my bed.
He indicated his, so I thanked him and started to unpack my stuff, leaving him to watch some drivel that was on the TV. It didn’t take me long to put everything away but by the time I was done I was sweating like a pig.
The cell was very hot. That was another design feature of the penal establishment: you either froze or you baked. If there was any heat at all in the cells it would be too much, otherwise they would be freezing. This prison was Victorian and there were two nine-inch cast iron heating pipes running through the rear of the cells. Ours must have been the first cell in the pipe run, getting the hot water direct from the boiler house. The result was that it felt like a sauna.
I stripped off to my boxers and sat on the bed to sort out my final bit of unpacking: teabags. The lad on the other bed was still scrunched up in his corner. When I asked if he would like a cup of tea he replied in the affirmative, so I filled the kettle and took a couple of teabags out of my stash. I always made sure that I had plenty of tea!
I asked my cellmate where his mug was; he pointed to a plastic one on the windowsill, so I got it, then made the tea. Another question, and he told me that he took milk and two sugars. No problem; I had lived in Germany long enough to get used to drinking tea without milk, and I had quickly got used to doing without sugar while I was in prison. As a result I had a stash of whiteners and sugars, which were always useful as trade items.
I handed the lad his tea and sat down on my bed. “I’m Mike, here for local release.”
As if it was local for me! Of the twenty years before my arrest I had probably spent three in this country, and most of that time had been down in London.
The lad told me his name was Steve, and he was on remand. I did not ask what for and did not want to know. The first thing you learned inside was don’t ask, don’t tell. Of course, no matter what you were in for it usually came out sooner or later; the screws were bound to let it slip if you hadn’t been outed by the press.
I glanced at my watch. Noting that it was nearly nine I asked Steve if it would be possible for me to watch Horizon. He asked which channel it was on and when I told him BBC2 he changed the channel and looked at me with a questioning expression.
“What?” I asked.
“Why didn’t you just take the controller and change channels?”
The question hit me like a ton of bricks. I would never have thought of doing something like that. I took a couple of seconds to think about it and then replied, “Because such action would be impolite.”
Steve looked at me with a blank expression on his face, as if I’d said something completely unfathomable.
The first few days with a new pad mate were always difficult. You had to work out what their boundaries were, and impose your own. After six years in the system I had become proficient at working it out, but Steve presented me with a problem; I had never come across anyone who was such a non-person. It was as if he just did not want to be noticed, being happy to curl up on his bed and keep out of the way. That is not how it works, however — at least not unless you totally want to be taken advantage off. I quickly got the impression that Steve was used to that.
That notion was confirmed at unlock the following morning. Just before the key was turned I heard a voice telling the screw to make sure that the new chap did his share of the cleaning. Not a problem; I like my cell to be clean, and that means cleaning it myself.
Steve was still in bed. I left him there, went to the sluice area and grabbed a mop and bucket, and a brush and dustpan. It was a good job I had been there before; at least I knew my way around.
When I got back to the cell Steve was out of bed. He gave me a puzzled look.
“Got anything under the bed?” I asked. He just nodded. “You better get it up on the bed before I sweep and mop. Then get out for a bit.” Steve smiled, pulled a couple of prop bags from under his bed and dumped them on top.
He turned to leave the cell but just before he did he turned back, “Mike, you’ll have to fill in your menu slip today, before lunch.”
I nodded to acknowledge that I had heard. Well, at least the boy could speak. After our exchange of names last night he had been totally silent and if I had not known better I might have assumed he was dumb. It didn’t take long to brush and mop out the cell. Well, how long does it take to mop a floor seven foot by twelve? Once finished, I took the cleaning stuff back to the sluice area.
When I got back to the common area Steve was standing by the pool table, and beckoned me over. A set of menus was laid out on the table and there was a pile of menu slips to be filled in. This was new, so I was grateful that Steve explained how things worked. I was even more grateful that he was speaking to me. It can be hell being stuck in a cell with somebody who won’t talk — or worse still, communicates in grunts. At least Steve appeared to have some command of the English language, unlike most of the younger inmates, and did not need to use fucking every third word.
I had just completed my menu selection for the week when the screw called out ‘behind your doors’. So, behind our doors we went. I noticed that Steve, like myself, was quick to get back in the cell. There are always some lads who hang around on the landing till the last possible moment, having to be ordered into their cells by the officer doing the lockup. I heard an officer shouting at somebody called Finnigan to get behind his door. A few moments later our door flap opened. The officer looked in, closed the flap and shot the bolt.
I got the kettle and started to fill it, asking Steve, who was lying on his bed, if he wanted tea or coffee. “Could I have a tea please? I don’t drink coffee.”
I made two teas and handed Steve his mug, then sat at my table and sorted out a text I needed to read for my course.
I had been in transit for three days and not had a chance to do any studying, which had been a pain. Although I was well ahead on things, one thing you learned in prison was to never assume that things would go the way you expect. There were too many ways things could go wrong, like some bloody security screw deciding, during a cell check, that the material I had for my course compromised security — just because he could not read the maths in the text book. That actually happened to me. It took eight weeks and the intervention of the Vice-Chancellor from the University I was studying with, to get that mess sorted out. Even then I don’t think anything would have been done had the Home Secretary not been a student at the same University and the Vice-Chancellor his tutor. From a couple of dropped hints I suspected that strings had been pulled behind the scenes — which resulted in the Governor not being very happy with the security screw.
Anyway, we were banged up and I had no idea how long for… but possibly till lunch. I decided I might as well get down and try to do some studying. It surprised me that Steve did not switch the TV on. Usually, that was the first thing the younger lads did when the bolt was shot. I glanced across at him and noticed he was reading — another surprise. Grateful of the chance to have some peace and quiet I turned to my studies.
About an hour later the flap was opened and a screw looked in, then the door was unlocked and opened. “Ramozis, education,” he stated. Steve got off his bed and got a folder out of the top of his cabinet. As he left he turned to me and said, “See you at lunch.”
The screw looked at me and glanced at his list. “What’s your name?”
“Richards, sir.” If you don’t know screws’ names you always call them sir or ma’am.
He checked the list again. “You’re not on my list. Are you doing any education?” I pointed to the textbook and papers on my table.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Structural Integrity Part Two.”
He came into the cell and looked at my work, then shook his head. “Rather you than me, lad, I couldn’t make head nor tail of all those squiggles. Right, you’ll be banged up till lunch.” With that he stepped out of the cell and locked the door.
I breathed a sigh of relief. It is always difficult when screws realise that you are more intelligent than they are. Some can be bloody resentful about it, especially if you are trying to do something to make use of your intelligence. Others can be damn right supportive, seeing the fact that you are doing something to give yourself a chance to improve your life as a positive thing. A few will actually go out of their way to help you. There was one screw at my last prison who, during a period when the External Studies Tutor was off on long-term sick leave, took it upon himself to research stuff on the internet and print it out for those of us doing external studies. It must have cost him a fortune in paper and ink as there were fifteen of us doing university level studies, and we all had a lot of stuff that needed researching.
I spent the next couple of hours working my way through the examples in the workbook, and looking up references in the textbook. This section of the course was giving me some problems; I was finding it difficult to understand the examples because I could not conduct the recommended experiments. HMP Albany’s educational policy might have been advanced for the prison service, but there was no way they were going to let me have hydraulic jacks, metal bars and cement beams to play around with — and definitely not an angle grinder!
The door was unlocked about ten to twelve. Steve came in; he did not look happy.
“Not a good morning, I presume?”
He turned and looked at me, “No, it was bloody shit. Maths and I don’t understand any of it. And she’s given us a pile of homework to do for Monday.” He placed his folder down on his table and pulled out a number of question sheets. He sat down and studied them, with a look of absolute despair on his face.
“Come on, it can’t be that bad.”
“It is. I’ll end up getting them all wrong and everyone will know what an idiot I am. I always fuck things up.”
“Would it help if I went through them with you?”
He turned and looked at me. “Would you?”
“Of course, why not?”
“Most people just ignore me.”
I was starting to get the feeling that Steve did not have a very high opinion of himself. Low self-esteem was not good if you intended to survive in prison. You needed to have a degree of self-confidence, otherwise the system would beat you into the dust, which was exactly what it was supposed to do.
Twenty minutes later we were unlocked to collect our lunch, then locked up again for roll check. I knew that we had at least an hour and an half. There were shift changes and officer lunch breaks to get out of the way before they did roll check, so they would not be phoning the numbers in to security till at least one forty five, and somebody would have the count wrong so there would have to be a recount. The earliest we would be unlocked would be two. That being the case, I thought I might as well help Steve with his maths.
It turned out that it was not mathematics but arithmetic. One thing that really gets me annoyed is people calling arithmetic maths. It’s not. Mathematics is a language that is used to solve problems. Arithmetic is a system of calculating using numeric values. It’s fair to say that you can’t do maths unless you have some knowledge of arithmetic, but you do not need maths to do arithmetic. Actually, you do not need all that much arithmetic to do maths. Look at Albert Einstein; he had trouble adding up his shopping list.
Anyway Steve had some arithmetic to do and it was not too hard. In fact, it was fairly simple so long as you knew the rules to follow. That was the problem. It appeared that the teacher had assumed a level of knowledge that Steve just did not have. She had explained everything in terms of numerators and denominators, without checking to see if her class understood what she meant. After helping Steve I had a strong suspicion that quite a few of her class would not know what she meant. Unfortunately nobody had asked, which is not surprising.
Well, it’s fairly obvious if you think about it. It is easy for somebody like myself, at fifty nine, to stick up my hand in a tutorial group and ask what internal distortion resistance means. I could be pretty sure that most of the group would have the same question. However, for a thirty-year-old in a class with other thirty-year-olds, all of whom are trying to not look stupid, it is not so easy to ask a question.
Once I had explained the basics of vulgar fractions to Steve, everything started to make sense to him. He was able to get on and make his way through the worksheet he had been set without any problems, or at least nothing major. He did need a bit of help sorting out improper fractions, but not much.
Unlock took place at half past two and the call went out for library. I took the opportunity to go along and get some books, as I knew I would be in the prison for seven weeks. It was Friday and I was a bit worried that I had not been called over to reception to sort out my property. Amongst my things were books that I was planning to read, but if I did not get over to reception it would probably be Tuesday before my stuff could be sorted out. Monday was always a busy day in reception with committals from the weekend, so it was unlikely that they would call for me then.
As it was I need not have worried. Mr Morris came to the unit for me just after three and took me over to reception.
I told him that I had intended to pass out five of the bags on the planned visit down at Albany, and I would be doing that as soon as I could arrange for my friend Paul to visit me in Leicester. That made life a lot easier for him as he just listed all five as sealed property bags to be handed out. He sorted out my visiting orders and made sure that my outstanding orders from Albany were transferred. That meant I could get a visit arranged as soon as possible
The sixth bag caused problems, because a pile of stuff we were allowed at Albany, like the word processor, was not allowed in this prison. I could understand that as it was a local facility; prisoners were not expected to be there long, so there was no provision for graduate external studies — or any external studies for that matter. The only educational provision was for basic literacy and numeracy. So, a number of things that were quite important for me were not on the facilities list, like my drawing board and geometry set. I could manage without my word processor — I always wrote my papers out long hand in the first place anyway — but I did need my technical drawing equipment to do the diagrams that were required.
Most people on the outside don’t understand that prisons work only if inmates and staff co-operate with each other. Most of the time they do. There has to be a degree of give and take on each side. Most officers will ignore the odd infringement of a prison rule so long as it is not likely to cause a problem. At the same time prisoners will not insist that officers do everything by the book all of the time. There are times when it is in everybody’s interest to bend the rules slightly.
So it was with Mr Morris. He phoned the governor and explained that I had a quantity of educational material which was not on the facilities list but which I needed to complete my studies. I noticed that he did not say exactly what the materials were, and that the governor did not appear to ask. As it was, I agreed to give up some stuff I did not need and Mr Morris put some stuff through on my property card as having the governor’s permission.
That avoided my having to use the request and complaints procedure, which would have involved an appeal to the Area Manager, then the Home Office, and probably a Judicial Review — all of which probably would not have got me anywhere, but would have caused an awful amount of paperwork for the prison staff.
I didn’t complain, and the staff didn’t look too closely at what I had; a satisfactory arrangement all round.
Mr Morris escorted me back to the unit, which appeared completely deserted, with no staff and no prisoners in sight. When Mr Morris unlocked my cell it was empty so I presumed Steve had gone to education or exercise.
On the way over to the unit Mr Morris had asked me about the studies I was doing and said that he was thinking of doing Open University. I had just completed a Cert Maths with the Open University, so showed him my some of my course work. He remarked that it did not seem to be too difficult. I told him it wasn’t, provided you kept up with the course work and the prescribed reading.
With that Mr Morris left, locking me in the cell. Being on my own I got my radio out of my prop bag and tuned into Classic FM. It was nice to be able to listen to some music and not have to have headphones on, which is the norm in a shared cell. I got down to sorting out my property and putting stuff in my locker, or in my prop bag under the bed. Then I put the kettle on to boil. Just then there was quite a bit of noise on the landing and I guessed that the staff and prisoners had returned. Once again I heard a screw shouting at Finnigan to stop chatting and get by his door.
The cell door opened to let Steve in and shut behind him. I picked up the headphones to plug them in, but Steve asked me to leave the radio on. He also asked me what the music was. It was Kilar’s Exodus.
“I like it; seems familiar,” he commented.
“Have you seen Schindler’s List?”
“No, is it from that?”
“No it’s not, but it was used as the music for the trailer.”
Steve confirmed he had seen that, which led to a conversation about the film. I was amazed to find that he had no understanding of the Holocaust; he thought it was just an incident where a pile of Jews were shot. I sat down on my bed and started to tell him the whole story: how not only Jews, but disabled people, religious dissenters, homosexuals, Slavs, Ukrainians and others were put to death, and that the Jews made up just part of the eleven million plus people killed.
It was during that conversation that I started to see another side to Steve. Clearly, he was not well educated; in fact, if anything his education was sadly lacking because he did not seem to have even a basic understanding of events in modern history. On the other hand, he was no idiot. Once he began to understand what we were talking about he asked some very pertinent and quite pointed questions… like why did the Dutch, Belgians and French allow the trains taking the prisoners to the camps to run? I told him there was no easy and simple answer to that. You needed to have lived in those countries at the time to even begin to understand.
From that point on things changed. I had not really paid much attention to Steve before but after that day I found that there was something more between us than one would normally expect in pad mates. Let’s be honest, most of the prisoners I came across there were morons, if that is not insulting morons.
The following Saturday and Sunday we were on lockdown most of the time due to staff shortages. A lot of inmates got worked up over lockdowns, but they never really bothered me. Having my studies and being able to get lost in a book kept me occupied. Being in a lockdown with a pad mate, especially one you don’t know well, can be a pain, though, and I must admit I was a bit worried when the unit manager came around just after Friday evening roll check to tell us there would be a lockdown over the weekend.
As it turned out the time we were confined to our cell was, if anything, quite helpful.
I spent hours talking to Steve and listening to what he had to say. In those two days he opened up to me in a way I don’t think he had to anybody before. He was, as I had guessed, addicted to heroin, although at that time he was on methadone as a substitute. Arguably that was worse, because it is harder to break an addiction to methadone than it is one to heroin. Why, oh why, does our government have a fix on not appearing to reward the addict? It would be a lot easier, simpler and cheaper if they followed the Swiss model and supplied addicts with heroin under clinically controlled conditions. I suppose it is too much to expect a government to act sensibly.
Anyway, it seems that Steve had been an addict for a long time and had been on the methadone programme for the previous couple of years, although he had relapsed a couple of times when he had missed appointments to get methadone scripts. The good news was that he had managed to get down to ten millilitres a day. He was about to move onto five millilitres a day, the final step before going clean, when he was arrested. The bad news was that he was back up to sixty millilitres. Apparently the prison service automatically put addicts on that dose when they arrived and did very little to reduce it.
I had never used drugs. Oh, I used cannabis once (all that did was trigger a migraine), and at a party somebody decided to drop some acid into my drink (which had no effect on me), but that was the extent of my drug use. As a result I was not au fait with the drug regime in prison.
Steve told me that there was a detox unit in the prison but that you could only get into it once you were sentenced… and there you hit one of the classical catch 22 situations that seem to abound in organisations like the prison service. The detox programme took three months, so you could only be admitted if you had at least three months left to serve. That meant you had to be sentenced to at least six months. If you received a sentence under four years you would be automatically released at the half-way point; a sentence over four years meant you would be released at the two-thirds point, although in both cases you would be on licence and subject to supervision once you got out till the end of your licence period. At least that was the case if you were sentenced to twelve months or more. Anything less and God help you, you were on your own. No licence, no supervision and no help with housing or jobs..
The problem was that the prison is a local and as such it did not hold people with sentences of more than one year. Given that any time spent on remand was set against your sentence, the chances were that once sentenced you would either have too little time left to serve to go into the detox unit, or your sentence would be such that you were immediately moved off to one of the training prisons. The result was that most of the time there was only a handful of prisoners who qualified for detox so half the unit’s cells were empty. Well, they were not empty, but they were not being used for detox.
The fact that Steve was a user should have put me right off him. I had had a couple of bad experiences with addicts and after that I had avoided anyone I even suspected might be a user. With Steve, though, somehow it did not make any difference. By time that weekend was over I knew quite a lot about him; although there was a lot I disliked about what he had done with his life, nevertheless I found myself liking him.
On the Monday morning Steve went off to education, and shortly after that Mr Lee, another officer I knew from my time on remand, came and took me to induction, or as he described it, “a fucking waste of time”. However, it was necessary to go through the motions and tick off the boxes on the check list.
One of those was education assessment, which was fun. The first question I was asked by the girl who was conducting the assessment — anybody under fifty looks young to me but she actually was a girl; I doubt if she was more than nineteen and I suspected she was on work placement from college — was how old was I when I left school?
I responded that I was fourteen.
She looked at me and remarked, “That means you’ve got no GCSEs then.”
I acknowledged that fact, because GCSEs did not exist when I was at school. Without asking any further questions she proposed that I should do Basic Literacy on Monday and Wednesday mornings and Basic Numeracy on Tuesday and Friday mornings. Thursday I would have IT skills.
In response to that I told her that I did not have time to do those as it would interfere with my studies.
She looked at me with an apparent attempt to assert her authority. “And what studies are those?”
“Postgraduate diploma in Material Engineering,” I responded. If she had bothered to look at my prison file she would have found that information in there.
“But you have to have a degree to do that,” she stated somewhat pointedly.
“I have three; five if you count degree equivalents,” I responded, enjoying the look of bafflement that passed over her face.
“How?” she exclaimed, as she opened my file and started to look through it.
“I went back to college in my twenties, and studied law and accountancy. I hold a BLaw and I have my Charted Accountant qualifications, which are recognised as first degree equivalents. I then got into information technology and wrote a couple of books, and did a Master’s degree in Computer Science. They admitted me to the Master’s course on the basis of my books. Whilst I was in Albany I did a Batchelor of Engineering and now I am doing a postgrad in Material Engineering. I hope to do a full Masters once I’m out, but it is not possible whilst inside.”
“You’re wasting my time!” was her response.
“No, you wasted your time by not reading my file before you started the interview.”
The problem with a lot of civilian staff in prisons was that they had a stereotypical image of what a prisoner was like. Probably ninety percent of the time they were correct; but the odd ten percent would catch them out — and it often caught them out badly.
After my comment she got up and left the interview room. Mr Lee returned. “You seem to have upset our Ms Simmonds.”
I nodded.
“What happened?”
“She had not read the file.”
“Typical, the more qualified they are the less likely they are to do the groundwork.”
“She’s qualified?” I asked.
“Oh yes, child genius, got into Oxford at sixteen and got her degree at nineteen, did a Master’s in Education last year… for all of which she knows nothing. Anyway, better get you over to the Health Centre, then we can get you back to the unit.”
The Health Centre visit was quick. The doctor knew me from my period on remand and he had made a point of reading my file. It took him about ten seconds to review and sign off on my meds. Then it was back to the unit.
Steve arrived back from education about half an hour after I got back, and immediately asked if I could help him with his worksheets. It was all fairly simple stuff and once I had explained it to him he quickly did the worksheet that he had to hand in at his next literacy class. However, a suspicion was starting to form in my mind.
Life dropped into a routine. Steve would go off to education in the morning; I would sit at my table and study. About quarter to twelve Steve would return and I would spend the next half to three quarters of an hour going over his worksheets with him. In the afternoon we would be unlocked at about two thirty for exercise, except on Fridays when we were unlocked at quarter to two so we could go to the library. Often in the evening we would lie on our beds and talk, or I would be writing letters with the radio on. Steve seemed to prefer the radio to TV and would often ask if he could borrow my radio and headphones if I wanted to watch a programme on TV.
Just before Christmas some stationery I had ordered whilst at Albany finally caught up with me. I had ordered it two days before I had been transferred out. Of course, it had arrived at Albany after I left and then had to follow me through the prison system.
With an ample supply of stationery on hand I decided to check out my suspicion about Steve. Whilst he was out at education I wrote a series of letters in different sizes on some white A4 card. Basically, I was constructing my own version of a Snellen chart — that set of letters of diminishing sizes you are asked to read when you go for an eye test.
Once lunch was over, I handed Steve one of the sheets and asked him to tell me what the letters were. He read them with no problem.
Then I put a card up in front of the TV and asked him to read that. He went to move closer to it, but I told him to stay where he was — about eight feet away from the chart. Steve started to tear up and said he could not read it. He started to cry. I went and gave him a hug and told him not to be upset. “You just need to see the optician.”
Unfortunately seeing an optician in prison was easier said than done. Mostly they had one who would attend periodically: if you were lucky, once a month; if you were unlucky, once a quarter. However, there was a way to short circuit the system, if you knew how.
When we were unlocked for exercise I approached Mr Roberts, another of the Senior Officers I knew from my time on remand, although he had not been an SO then. I asked if I could have a confidential word with him later. He agreed.
As we were returning from exercise Mr Roberts called out that he wanted to see me in the interview room. I went there and took a seat to wait for him.
A few minutes later, after doing lockup, Mr Roberts came in. “All right, Richards, what is it?”
“It’s Ramozis, Mr Roberts. I am a bit concerned about him.”
“Oh, what’s up?”
“He is getting very depressed over problems he’s having in education. In fact, I think he might do something stupid if it is not sorted out soon.” I sat back in my chair letting that sink in.
“Oh, shit!”
I had played the at risk card and that had got his attention. I could give him a way to deal with it, but first he had to ask for my help.
“Right, Richards, what’s the problem?”
I quickly explained that Steve was very short-sighted and could not read the whiteboard in education. Mr Roberts asked why he was not wearing glasses and I told him I believed he had lost them at the time of his arrest. I went on to say that he had put in an application to see the optician when he had arrived at the prison but nothing had happened. I was fairly certain that both those statements were false, but the number of applications that got mislaid in prison was beyond belief so nobody was going to be able to check up.
Once appraised of this information Mr Roberts said he would deal with the issue, and returned me to my cell.
I told Steve what I had done, and that, when asked, he should say that he had glasses on the outside but had not been wearing them when he was arrested. He was also to say that he had applied to see the optician the first week he was on remand. I assured him that Mr Roberts would sort something out.
One thing that always worried prison officers was having somebody who was likely to self-harm. They would go out of their way avoid any such problems, so I fully expected something to be sorted out quickly. I was not prepared for just how quickly!
About half an hour after I returned to the cell one of the Health Centre officers unlocked us and told Steve he had an appointment. I don’t know whether that was one of the days when the optician was in and they pushed Steve onto the list, or if they had called the optician in, but in just over an hour he was back in the cell with the news that he was getting glasses.
Somebody must have pulled something somewhere, for the following week, on Christmas Eve to be exact, Steve’s glasses arrived. In the intervening week I had managed to find out that he had never had his eyes tested.
The eye test incident brought about a change in my interaction with Steve. I had put my arm around him and given him a hug when he was crying. For anyone who hasn’t been in prison let me tell you that was a big no-no. Physical contact with other inmates was kept strictly to a minimum — and I mean a minimum — unless, of course, you were fucking their brains out. That is mostly the straights, though; most gay prisoners avoid that type of relationship.
However, the physical contact seemed to have broken a barrier on both sides. After that I found that if I was sitting at my table, drawing a diagram to explain something to Steve, when he looked over my shoulder to follow what I was doing he would often place a hand on my shoulder. I found myself doing the same when I was looking over his shoulder at the worksheets he was doing. Something seemed to be drawing us together, although I could not see what.
One thing was quite clear: Steve was not my type. For a start, I was nearly twenty eight years older than he was. More important, he did not have the intellectual capacity that I needed in my companions. I’m not saying Steve was stupid; in fact I had begun to think he was far from that, but there was no way he was up to my level. As far as I was concerned Steve was definitely not relationship material. There was also the minor matter of his being straight.
Strangely, though, having Steve around just seemed natural. Not in the way you got used to having a pad mate around; this was something more. He seemed to sense when I was stuck on something in my studies, and getting tense. He would get up and make some tea, forcing me to break from whatever was causing the problem.
Then came the day when I was having a particularly nasty time trying to calculate tension and compression forces on a structure; forces which I was sure could never have existed in reality but dreamed up as some fiendish plot by the author of the text book to give you the worse possible calculations to do. I had been stuck on it for a couple of hours and my neck and shoulders were really starting to ache. Steve came up behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders and his thumbs on the back of my neck, and started to massage me. After about twenty minutes I was really relaxed.
“Where did you learn that?” I asked.
“Oh, I worked in a sports place when I first left school. I learnt it there; they said I should train as a therapeutic masseur.”
“Did you?”
“No, it was about then that I started using. The moment they found out I was fired.”
That got us talking about his future.
I knew Steve liked to exercise — he went to the gym whenever there was a session available. That did not seem very often for our unit, but when there was one Steve went. Overall, although somewhat on the thin side, he did not have a bad body. It wasn’t one of the heavily-muscled body-building types you see a lot in prison, but there was clear defined muscle there. Steve quite liked exercise, and seemed to know a lot about it, so the obvious work for him would be in a gym or similar facility. That would require him to be registered on the Register of Exercise Professionals, and neither of us knew what that required. I told him I would look it up when I got out and send him the information.
There, I had done it; I had committed myself to staying in touch with Steve once I got out… a total breach of everything I had said I would do, or planned to do, once I was out. My idea had been to put prison behind me and forget about it as soon as possible. Clearly that was not going to be the case.
Christmas Day fell on a Thursday, so the previous Friday was our last chance to go to the library for some three weeks. As a result we were allowed to take out six books rather than the normal four. I had already taken out a couple of books which I knew were going to be fairly heavy reading, so I knew I had enough to last me over the Christmas period. I also knew I had a couple of books coming in from an online supplier ordered for me by my ex-partner in Holland. So, not needing any extra reading material I grabbed a book on IQ tests. I thought it might come in useful over the Christmas-New Year period.
It did. There were staff shortages again and we were banged up for most of Christmas Day and all of Boxing Day. We were given half an hour’s exercise on Christmas Day, as well as a half hour association during which we could make phone calls. Boxing Day was bang up all day. It was not a problem for me, and as it turned out, not really one for Steve either.
On Christmas day I got him to have a go at some of the IQ tests. The results confirmed what I had suspected: his IQ appeared to be above average. He was not a genius, but he was well up at the top end of the normal range. He touched on above-normal in a couple of the tests.
Once I had the results I tried to explain to Steve why he scored above-average on the tests but did so badly in class. I pointed out that surviving on the streets, as he had done for a number of years, took intelligence. A stupid person would not last very long; you had to have street smarts. IQ is not a measure of how clever you are; rather it is an indication of your potential.
The fact that he had an above-average IQ — and that I had been able to show him that — gave Steve much-needed confidence. We had talked about his future a few times but he had always been very negative about it. Whenever I had suggested that he should look at doing a course or getting some training his response had been that he was too stupid for that. With the IQ tests, I had shown him that he was not too stupid at all, and he began to realise that classes or training might be a real possibility.
In the week between Christmas and New Year there were no education classes, so Steve was in the cell all morning. As I had done everything I could on my studies, at least until I got out, I spent the time going through all his worksheets with him. I was pleasantly surprised at how much he was able to pick up once it was explained to him in a way he understood.
Education was open as usual after New Year, so Steve was back in class each morning. He had tests on the Monday and Tuesday and the following Thursday he came back to the cell with a big smile on his face. He had not only passed the tests, but had obtained a Level 2 Diploma in both Literacy and Numeracy. That evening we broke open one of my reserve bars of chocolate to celebrate, and to say goodbye, because I was to be released the following day.

The hint of a smile crossed the face of the Warlord as he eased himself back into the campaign chair.  He turned to his communications officer and gave his instructions, which were immediately passed to the field.  A twinge of pain, reminding the old warrior about his age, shot through him.
Really he was getting too old for this.  Maybe after this battle he could resign and let somebody else take over the responsibility of being Warlord.  There were plenty who would like the post, like the young Rebel opposite.  In a couple of more years and a few more battles he would have enough experience, possibly, to take on the role.  The gods knew he had fought enough battles to get to this one.
The flight of Fire Dragons as expected swept forward from the Rebel's line, just as the Warlord had expected.  That combination of moves had first been used by the Emperor Tsu Shai some three thousand years ago.  Not used often since, for the simple reason it was very rare that a battle went on long enough for a situation to develop where it could be used effectively, but this one had.  Twelve great crossbows that the Warlord had ordered forward just for this eventuality spewed forth their bolts, six of the seven Fire Dragons fell from the sky. The seventh would no doubt turn and return to its lines.
With care the Warlord checked the projection of the battle that was before him.  It was nearly time.  The time was coming, he would use the Immortals.  Again he smiled to himself.  This had been a good battle, in so much as any battle could be good.  Most of those he fought these days were little more than skirmishes.  The son of some disgruntled member of the nobility raising a force to challenge the authority of the Empire.  They would come to the field having studied all the great books on war and execute some manoeuvre that they had found and thought effective.  It was then that they found that nine times out of ten the Warlord had written the definitive description of the manoeuvre.  The other one time out of ten he had invented it, which was of course the reason he was the Warlord.
He had not only read the books on war, he had written all of the more up to date ones.  He had not learnt his war craft studying in some classroom, he had learnt it on the field, just like the Rebel opposite.  The Rebel was different.  He did not come to the battle with Tsu Shai's 'The Use of the Ten Thousand' tucked under his arm, in all likelihood he probably had never read it, that is if he could read.  The Warlord made a mental note to check after the battle if the Rebel could read.  If he could not that could explain why he had been so successful.  Not bound by the theories of war that had been laid down over the generations.
That was what had made this battle an interesting challenge.  It had not been predictable.  The Rebel had not followed any formal plan or strategy laid down in some book or other.  Not like the young bucks who would come to the field of battle from time to time.  They did not expect to win, they only wanted to be able to boast to those around them that they had fought the Warlord.  They came with their advisors and books of reference, ready to look up the details of any change from the proscribed form of the battle as laid down by some author or other.  They were not warriors who understood war, but students who appreciated books.  Indeed one had come to the field of battle with a copy of 'The Concept of War' by the Warlord himself and sent it over before the battle with a request that the Warlord sign it, very unlike the Rebel.
The Warlord had observed the Rebel when he arrived.  There had been no crowd of advisors and strategists round him.  Just a communications officer and a servant to pour drinks and arrange refreshments, though from the apparent intimacy between them the Warlord thought the servant might be more than just a pourer of drinks.  He had not arrived dressed in finery to impress his staff, just a plain comfortable white robe that would reflect the heat of the midday sun.  The Warlord, sweltering in his Imperial robes of office, envied the young man across the field of battle.  At least he had been able to dress sensibly for the day’s events.
In many ways the Warlord could appreciate and understand the Rebel.  The two of them were so much alike.  They both came from the same background, that of the middle class tradesmen.  The Rebel like the Warlord had objected against the bullying and inconsideration of the petty nobility.  He has stood up against the young bloods with their troops of soldiers and had soon raised enough support amongst the local populace to go up against them in minor skirmishes.  Here he had had the advantage, not knowing the rules and etiquette of the procedures of war, he had just gone in to win.
A couple of victories had given the Rebel a greater following and a reputation.  Now the younger sons of the minor nobility wanted to try their skill against him.  One by one they had fallen to the unconventional tactics of the Rebel and his disregard for established rules of battle.
The Warlord knew just how it was.  He had come up the same way from nearly the same start.  Indeed the towns from which they both came were in the same province, less than a days march apart.  Thirty years ago he had been the Rebel, now he sat in the Warlord's tent supervising the field of battle, that was the way of things.  He eased himself around in the chair, leaning over to give a command to his communications officer.  A command that would start to amass his forces behind the Imperial Immortals, those highly trained troops that were the invincible force in his battles. 
It had not always been the case though.  He remembered when he had been the Rebel and had faced the Warlord of the time.  Then the Immortals had been on the field as they always were.  Everyone knew that the Immortals were invincible, so when they joined the fight the opposing troops just fled.  That is everyone but a young Rebel who had never read the classic texts on war.  All he had looked at was the reports of the last fifty battles and he had observed one thing.  When the Immortals charged they were never challenged.  Nobody had seen them fight.  This got the that Rebel into thinking, if nobody had seen them fight how did anyone know how good they were.  So he had kept part of his force back in reserve and when the Immortals advanced and the cry when up, 'The Immortals are coming', he had launched his reserves into a direct attack on them.  His guess had been right, in eighty years of never having to fight, just being display soldiers, they had become soft.  That had been the end of the old Warlord and he had taken his place.
This new Rebel would not have such luck.  The Warlord had kept his Immortals well trained and made sure he used them to effect in every battle.  They were his hammer that he drove hard into the enemy.  The battle hardened elite troops that would drive a wedge deep into the ranks of the opposing force.  A weapon to use once he had spotted a weakness in the line of the troops who opposed him.
There it was, the weakness that the Warlord was looking for.  The heavy infantry on the left flank were having difficulty holding their ground.  The Rebel had moved two units of foot from the centre to support the left flank.  That left the centre weak.  Now was the time for the Immortals.  He identified the target and gave the command to his communications officer.  Then watched the field of battle before him as the scarlet and gold mass that was the Immortals started to advance down the slight hill towards the opposing centre.  Behind them came rank after rank of light infantry to mop up the remains.
It always amazed the Warlord how slow the critical parts of the battle seemed to go.  There seemed to be an age during which the Immortals advanced down hill before they made contact with the centre, far longer than he would have expected.  Too long in fact.  He looked again at the battle lines, the opposing centre was pulling back drawing his Immortals on deep into, into the Horns of the Ox.  But for that the Rebel would need light troops on his flanks and he had heavy infantry on the left.

Waiting, that is what it is all about.  There is of course a technical term for it. There is a technical term for almost anything.  In this case the term was ambush hunting. Martin though preferred to think of it as the waiting game. It was a game of course. A deep, deadly and at its end bloody game of seduction and betrayal, a dance of death, in which one partner did not know that they were dancing.

Tonight Martin intended his partner to be Tommy, the graceful youth with pale lips and deep blue eyes; who had draped himself across the end of the bar at the Kabouter, seemingly oblivious to what was going on. The decadent evil of the place seemed to offer no thrill for him or for that matter any interest. That was probably true, for how can anybody like Tommy appreciate the fine interplay of corruption that fills places like blot that was the Kabouter?

Martin though well appreciated that corruption. He had been brought here, when hardly eight, and seated on a bollard by the Hertengracht, outside the window whilst his father and uncle had auctioned off his services for the night. The memory of that night is long lost to Martin or to be more correct subsumed into a thousand and one nights that past-until he was old enough not to stand outside and be bid for by the ancient scented men but t0 come in and sell his body to those he choose.

The only thing he recalled from that first evening was the smell rising from the canal behind him mixing with the tobacco smoke drifting out from the brown bar. He forgot the faces that looked out from the window at him, or the events that followed that night. All he remembered was the feeling he got from the tablet his uncle had given him, the one he wanted more of in the weeks and months to come and the present his father had given him the next day for being a "good boy".

Oh, there was also the loss. He could not say what it was that he had lost but he knew he had lost something. Nowadays he had a name to put to it. It was innocence, but what that was he could not say. Maybe Tommy had it maybe that was why he seemed so untouched by this place.

Not that Martin could accept that, innocence could never come through the door of the Kabouter. It would instantly know the evil that existed within and draw back from it. That Martin knew so he was certain that Tommy must be drawn to that evil. To be so drawn, yet seeming unaffected by it, meant that the youth must be possessed of that specific evil that is so purely evil, that all others leave it unaffected. That was what made Tommy Martins prey.

The first time the youth had entered the bar, Martin had sensed it. He had an awareness of evil in its many forms, for had he not either sold or indulged in, or often both, all of the evils the Kabouter had to offer. No depravity had been too much for him, no activity too extreme. He was a connoisseur of all that was dark and hidden in man's soul, and he knew full well what was hidden in Tommy's.

So it was that Tommy had become an unknowing partner in a dangerous dance. Yes, there was danger. Martin knew full that there were risks in obtaining the feast of blood that he so desired. The very thought of that feast brought a delightful tingling to Martin's lips and a sense of anticipation to his being. He raised his eyes and looked down the length of the room to the corner of the bar, where Tommy perched on a high stool, half draped. half slumped across the end of the bar.

Stefan, that old queen, predatory like a big cat, a black cat, preying always on youth in the hope of regaining that which he had long lost, stood beside him, no doubt offering Tommy inducements to share his company. It was not, Martin noticed, so much the caste that Tommy ignored the man and his blandishments, it was more the case that he was oblivious to them. For him they did not exist, they had no importance.  Martin guessed that there was no debauchery; no corruption; no sweet evil that Stefan could offer that came near to what Tommy sought.

As if to confirm his guess the youth looked up from his glass of forbidden drink, a half smoked cigarette hanging precariously from his lower lip and smiled at Martin their eyes meet and in that meeting Matin found confirmation of what he already knew Tommy sought true evil. Not the fashionable display of debauched perversion. that is just the illusion of evil. Nor did he seek the corrupt excess of the drugged addict, for their evil are an illusion for it is without understanding or intent. Tommy craved for that well-thought evil, that is, pure in intent and execution, not done because it is the current fad, or seems interesting, nor sunk into out of despair and self loathing. Tommy sought that pure evil, the evil whose act is fully understood and is committed because it can be, in the full knowledge of its consequences and its delights. This is what Martin knew he could supply. This was the moment Martin has been waiting for; soon the feast of blood would begin. He started to move down the bar, as he did his hand slipped into his pocket, seeking out the thumb blade, that sharp pointed thimble with a razors edge, which he slipped onto his thumb.
'
Those within the bar knew him for what he was. Why not, for they knew his history it was they who had made him what he was. Had they not paid for his body to warm them during the long nights of pure debauchery?  Had they not led him into excesses beyond the imagining of all but the most corrupt? They had been with him when first he had raped and filmed him when he had, still a child, made his first kill. They knew him well, in word, deed and act, and they knew that he now exceeded them in all aspects of evil and corruption. Now he hunted and this they understood, wondering what was his prey. Hoping it was not them.

So they drew back and watched as he passed by, forming a free corridor in this crowd of inhuman mortality. They watched as Martin approached the youth, the aloof stranger who only recently had come to this bar, and gave a sigh of relief. The hunter was not hunting them. Martin stopped and looked at the youth. How old was he, eighteen, nineteen, maybe younger, maybe older? Martin was well aware that what he saw did not reflect that beings true age, it never did with their kind. Around the bar were boys at their trade, hardly into their teens, and already passing for eighteen or twenty. Soon, that which brought them their business would pass. Martin himself looked more like thirty than the just turned twenty that he was, twelve years in the Kabouter had taken their toll.

Twelve years of hunting, twelve years of waiting, for what? For this, for the youth who now raised his head and smiled at him. Somehow Martin had known, right from those early days, when it had been his body that was sold and not his soul, that Tommy would exist. This youth who evil seemed to wash around like water on a seashore rock, yet though he seemed untouched Martin knew that even he would be worn down eventually.

That is why he had waited, why he had carefully prepared. It had be five days before when the youth had first entered the bar. Just after eight on a dark late autumn night, when the first frosts of the winter yet to come, made themselves known. For the Kabouter it was early, the place was barely open, though for its regulars it never really closed. There had been some ten or so in the bar. Martin sat at his comer table, a bottle of cheap red wine and a half full glass. He had looked up expecting to see a tourist who had lost his way from the carefully prepared sights of the red light district and wondered into the shambles that was the Kabouter's world. Such would stray in every now and again, drawn like ships to a wreckers light by false promise of warmth and safety, to be quickly fleeced and turned out again, or, if the locals felt playful, drawn into activities they would long wish to forget. Such forgetfulness being impossible, for each month thereafter the bill for the night’s entertainment would arrive, with photos showing what they had done!

The youth who entered that night was no lost tourist but a seeker, seeking that which he knew only the Kabouter would be able to supply. He went to the end of the bar, taking the high stool, it had now become his place, and ordered absinthe. Piet, held back his denials that they had the stuff and poured the forbidden drink, asking for the name to be put on the tab. "Tommy". The name reverberated through the silent bar, where all wondered who the youthful stranger might be? What were his perversions? Was he selling, buying or both? Even then Martin had known him for what he was, choosing him as victim upon that first sight. It was then that the hunt began. There had been no contact that first night, no that was far too soon, it could easily scare the prey away. The next night when Tommy entered, Martin acknowledged his right to be there with a short incline of the head. Later that evening, they spoke briefly by the cigarette machine, whilst eyeing up a boy who was leaning on the canal side rail, outside the window, his price chalked on the sole of his shoe. Though both commented upon the boy, neither had any interest, for his corruption was too innocent to appeal to their tastes.

There was no contact the following evening, other than a quick acknowledgement of each other presence, but all that night Martin had been aware of the youth's eyes upon him. He knew that Tommy was interested in him, ready to take the bait, but he needed to be certain that Tommy would take the hook as well. So the next night Martin stayed away. That was a rare event. Few in Kabouter could remember a night when he had not been present, even if only for a few minutes to pick up a client.

So Martin had Tommy's interest. An interest fuelled by the fear that he might not be there. He would want Martin, desire him and would not risk losing him. Martin placed himself at the bar next to the youth. For a moment Stefan looked annoyed, then, acknowledging that Martin was master here, moved away. Tommy looked up at him, a slight smile on his face. There were no words, just an exchange of looks, they both knew this game. With a glance Martin indicated the door that led out to the side ally and its lost world beyond. Tommy nodded and removed his wallet, extracting a medium denomination note that more than covered his tab, placing it under his glass in payment to Piet.

He stood and the two the them exchanged smiles, both in anticipation of what was to come, both enjoying some secret anticipation of the fulfilment of their desire. Walking together they left the bar, the pale youth and the dissolute man aged beyond his years. Out in the ally they found darkness, the only light coming from a spluttering gas street light and the end, and even that was across the canal.

Both welcomed this darkness, for it was their world, a world of deception and evil. A world that embraced them, just as Martin embraced Tommy, drawing him close to his body. Their lips meet, fleetingly, a symbolic hint at desire, then moved on for each sought something else. Martin's steel tipped thumb came up to stroke the youth's bare neck he did not see the feral snarl on Tommy's face, as his lips pulled back revealing vampire fangs that sunk deep into Martin's neck.