The Fahrenheit Twins Read Free Page B

giving myself permission to let go of my little reservoir of waste, but nothing happens, so I leave. At least I know how to find it now.
    Finally it is time for the evening meal. The two old nurses arrive and start cooking, in the kitchen behind the canteen. A watery miasma emanates from their labours, floating out into the hall, ascending to the ceiling. There is a general murmur of anticipation. I go to the toilet, successfully clear my bowels, and find myself disturbed almost to tears by the softness of the toilet paper. I wash my hands under the sign of the green cross. A dark coffee of grime swirls in the sink, dilutes and gurgles away.
    When I return to the dining hall, a queue is forming at the canteen counter. I wonder whether the Safehouse is the sort of set-up where all the really decent food is snatched by the early birds and there’s only scraps and clammy leftovers for the latecomers. I take my place in the queue, even though I’m not particularly hungry. It’s an opportunity to stand close behind someone, trying to read what’s written on their back.
    I’m standing behind a young man with bad acne on his neck and head. He has very short hair, like felt, lovingly clipped to avoid any trauma to all the bulbous little eruptions dotting the flesh of his skull. I wonder if a hairdresser charges a great deal more for that: to exercise such care, such restraint, such understanding. What has brought this young man here, if he so recently had a hairdresser who was prepared to handle his head so gently?
    On the back of the young man’s T-shirt is an unbelievable amount of text, a dense mass of small print which I can’t imagine to be anything more than a random weave of symbols, a stylish alphabet texture. Starting near the top of his left shoulder, I read as much as I can before my attention wanes:
    n:12/5/82, M:pnd (s), F:ai, pM1:30/5/82}gs(! vlegLnd),
hf8B, M2:31/5/82}gs(!vlegLsd), @n7, gH, ^MGM:ingm, b,
c(T)@m, pMGM3:4/6/82(v[#]penisd++), >@m, ¬X+,
Hn>j, pF4:8/12/82,
    and so on and on, thousands of letters and numbers right down to his waist. I peek over the young man’s shoulder, at the back of the woman standing in front of him, and then, leaning sharply out from the queue, I glimpse the backs of half a dozen people further on. They’re all the same in principle, but some of them have text that only goes as far down as the middle of their backs, while others have so much that their T-shirts have to be longer, more like smocks or dresses.
    My own T-shirt is pretty roomy, come to think of it. Definitely XL. I wonder what’s on it.
    There is a man standing behind me, a tall man with thick glasses and hair like grey gorse. I smile at him, in case he’s been reading the back of myT-shirt and knows more than me.
    ‘Lamb tonight,’ he says, his magnified bloodshot eyes begging me to leave him be.
    I turn and face front again. When my turn comes to be served, I am given a plate of piping-hot lamb stew. The fat nurse has dished it up in such a way that there is a big donut-shaped ring of mashed potato all around the edge of the plate, with a puddle of stew enclosed inside it. As she hands it over she smiles wanly, as if admitting she just can’t help being a bit creative with the presentation, but maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe she’s learned that this is the best way to prevent people spilling stew off their plates on their way back to the tables.
    I sit down somewhere and eat the stew and the potato. There’s quite a lot of lamb in the gravy and there’s a few carrots and beans floating about as well. I haven’t had anything this wholesome since my …well, for a long time anyway.
    When it’s all over, I stare into space. I’d meant to keep an eye on the others, to ascertain how much food the last ones in the queue got. But I forgot. My memory is not what it was; thoughts and resolutions crumble away like biscuits in a back pocket. The important thing is that no one is moving me on. I