Mothers and Sons Read Free

the morning to the sound of children, watching television in the evenings, robbing, making plans and deals. And what unsettled him in the dream was the feeling that he was happy to be locked up, to have order in his life, to keep rules, to be watched all the time, not to have to think too much. As he was led through those corridors in the dream, he had felt resigned to it, almost pleased.
    He had felt like this for much of the time when he served his only adult sentence in Mountjoy Jail. He had missed his wife and their first child, and missed going where he liked, but he had not minded being locked up every night, he enjoyed having all that time to himself. Nothing unpredictable occurred and that made him content; the other prisoners knew not to come too close to him. He hated the food, but he paid no attention to it, and he hated the screws, but they knew to be careful of him as well. He made sure when his wife came on visits once a week that he gave nothing away, no emotion, no sense of how lonely and isolated he sometimes was. Instead they spoke about what would happen when he would get out, as she slowly put her finger into his mouth, a finger she had just wriggled around inside herself, so that he could take in the smell of her, and hold it, letting her talk about the neighbours and her family while she made it fresh again for him. He touched her hand so that the smell might stay with him for the rest of the day.
    His first days in Lanfad were the ones which lingered most in his mind. Perhaps because it was in the midlands and he had never been outside the city before. He was stunned by the place, by how cold and unfriendly it wasand how he would have to stay there for three or four years. He had allowed himself to feel nothing. He never cried and when he felt sad he made himself think about nothing for a while; he pretended that he was nowhere. That was how he dealt with his years at Lanfad.
    In the time he was there he was beaten only once and that was when the entire dormitory was taken out one by one and beaten on the hands with a strap. Usually, however, he was left alone; he kept the rules when he knew there was a danger of being caught. He realized that it was easy to slip out on a summer’s night as long as you waited until everything was quiet and you chose the right companion and you did not go too far. He learned how to raid the kitchen and made sure not to do it too often in case they set a trap for him. As he thought about it now, lying back on the sofa, he realized that he had liked being on his own, standing apart from the others, never the one caught jumping from bed to bed, or locked in a fight, when the brother in charge entered the room.
    On one of his first nights there, there was a fight in the dormitory. He heard it starting, and then something like: ‘Say that again and I’ll burst you.’ This was followed by cries of encouragement. So there had to be a fight; there was too much energy in the dormitory for something not to happen. Although it was dark, you could make out shapes and movements. And he could hear the gasping and the pushing back of beds and then the shouting from all around. He did not stir. Soon, it would become his style not to move, but at this early stage he had not developed a style. He was too uncertain to do anything. Thus when the light was turned on and one of the older brothers, BrotherWalsh, arrived, he did not have to scramble back into his bed like the rest of them, but still he felt afraid as the brother loped menacingly about the dormitory. There was now an absolute silence. Brother Walsh spoke to no one but walked around the beds looking at each boy as though he would pounce on him. When the brother looked at him, he did not know what to do. He met his gaze and then looked away and then back again.
    Eventually, the brother spoke.
    ‘Who started it? Stand out who started it.’
    No one replied. No one stood out.
    ‘I’ll pick two boys at random and they’ll tell