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- Herausgeber: New Island
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
'It's jail,' I said. 'Don't expect better of anybody in jail. Expect worse.' Welcome to Her Majesty's Prison Loanend, where inmate Harold 'Chalky' Chalkman – serving twelve for a violent assault, and lucky not to have been done for attempted murder – works as the orderly to 'E' and 'F' wings. Burning with authenticity, The Wing Orderly's Tales is about damnation and redemption, humour and darkness, and the slivers of humanity that survive in even the harshest environments.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Carlo Gébler was born in Dublin in 1954. He lives outside Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.
He is the author of several novels, including A Good Day for A Dog and The Dead Eight (shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award), the short story collection W9 & Other Lives, works of non-fiction including the narrative history, The Siege of Derry and the memoir The Projectionist: The Story of Ernest Gébler. He has also written novels for children as well as plays for radio and the stage, including 10 Rounds, which was shortlisted for the Ewart-Biggs Prize. He is a member of Aosdána. From 1991 to 1997, he taught creative writing in HMP Maze and from 1997 to 2015 he was writer-in-residence in HMP Maghaberry. He currently works in the community with prisoners who are nearing the end of their sentences.
Also by Carlo Gébler
Fiction
The Eleventh Summer
August in July
Work & Play
Malachy and His Family
Life of a Drum
The Cure
W9 & Other Lives
How to Murder a Man
A Good Day for a Dog
The Dead Eight
Non-Fiction
Driving Through Cuba: An East–West Journey
The Glass Curtain: Inside an Ulster Community
Father & I: A Memoir
The Siege of Derry: A History
My Father’s Watch (with Patrick Maguire)
My Writing Life
Confessions of a Catastrophist
The Projectionist: The Story of Ernest Gébler
Children’s Fiction
The TV Genie
The Witch That Wasn’t
The Base
Young Adult Fiction
Frozen Out
Caught on a Train
August ’44
The Bull Raid
Drama
Dance of Death
10 Rounds
Henry & Harriet and Other Plays
Charles & Mary
Belfast by Moonlight
Libretti
Adolf Gébler, Clarinettist
The Room in the Tower
Number Seven
Totaled
The Wing Orderly’s Tales
The Wing Orderly’s Tales
Carlo Gébler
THE WING ORDERLY’S TALES First published in 2015 by New Island Books 16 Priory Hall Office Park Stillorgan County Dublin Republic of Ireland.
www.newisland.ie
New Island is a member of Publishing Ireland, the Irish book publishers’ association.
Copyright © Carlo Gébler, 2016
The author has asserted his moral rights.
PRINT ISBN: 978-1-84840-494-6
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-84840-496-0
MOBI ISBN: 978-1-84840-495-3
All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.
British Library Cataloguing Data.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
For Euan
‘. . . shew thy pity on all captives and prisoners.’
— The Book of Common Prayer
‘Everything’s got a moral, if you can only find it.’
— Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Contents
Author’s Note
The New Boy
Eskimo
Chums
Clusterfuck
Smurf
SC
Engine
Sweet Gene
The ABC Con
Cell 13
Magic
Christopher Jenkins
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
A wing is a separate section of a building, usually in a jail, and an orderly in such a setting is a prisoner with responsibility for keeping the area clean and tidy.
In the UK penal system (of which Northern Ireland is a part), prisoners currently receive a tiny weekly stipend in return for such duties. They can use their earnings to buy toiletries, tobacco, food and other items from the prison Tuck Shop.
Besides money, the work affords orderlies privileged contact with staff. In the closed, authoritarian and often capricious world of prison, the value of such contact usually outweighs any antagonism orderlies may encounter from other prisoners who disapprove of their close contact with staff.
Prison culture is the foundation of these stories but readers need to remember that this is fiction. The reader may find Belfast on a map but will look in vain for HMP Loanend and YOC Culcavy (which feature in these pages) because they’re invented, as are all the characters, none of whom bears any relation to people either living or dead.
The New Boy
Once I was convicted in Belfast Crown Court, I was taken back downstairs and locked in a holding cell. It was cold and manky and on the walls prisoners had scrawled graffiti. It was the usual stuff about fuckwit judges, cruel sentences, paramilitaries, football teams, wives, children, and the scribblers’ despair, rage and revenge plans – which mostly involved tearing someone’s head off. I’d no tobacco – can you fucking believe it, no smoking in the courthouse – and nothing to read – for some reason no one’s ever been able to explain to me, you’re not allowed a book in court either – so I stretched out on this bench that was covered in a heavy nasty plastic that smelt of old sweat and spunk and something chemical, and dozed. I didn’t want to think.
After a while I heard keys jangling and then the cell door opened and I sat up.
‘We’re going,’ said the Escort screw at the door.
I stood up without thinking and held my arms out, wrists side by side. I knew the drill. That’s what jail does: it gets in you and then you do what they want automatically. Like breathing, it just happens.
The Escort cuffed me and brought me out to the yard behind the courthouse and put me in a horsebox. That’s what you call a prison van. He stuck me in a wee cubicle about four-foot square with a moulded plastic seat and a high wee window to let light in and tacky patches on the floor. I’d been caught short a few times and had to piss in a horsebox myself so I wasn’t surprised.
The cubicle door closed, the key turned. I sat and braced my feet against the wall to push myself back in the seat. I didn’t want my new trainers touching the pissy old floor any more than they had to. I heard other cons being loaded on and as they were the horsebox shifted on its axles. Some of them were shouting and swearing. A bad day in court, I guessed.
