The great expectations problem

I was woken early one morning by the ceaseless ringing of the bells from the prison ships camped offshore. The bleak message they sent out was well known to all who live in the shadow of the ships: a convict had broken out.

A short while later I was further disturbed by a hammering on my back door. I dressed quickly and hurried downstairs to find Alun in an agitated mood.

“There’s been a breakout Jed,” he said, “a foul murderer has escaped from one of the hulks.”

As the sole residents of the island we shared the grim duty of ensuring that the prisoner hadn’t set up camp on our island. Alun walked down to the empty house, to check that the convict hadn’t taken up residence. I, meanwhile, took to patrolling the shores.

I stopped for a rest along by the smokers’ graveyard. In the distance I could see the low leaden line of the mainland. The mad ringing of the ships’ bells was almost drowned out by the savage rushing of the wind and crashing of the waves against the loose gathering of rocks that made up our beach.

“Hold your noise,” cried a terrible voice, as the figure of a man suddenly started up from the graves and bared down upon me like a predator on his prey. He was a fearful man in coarse grey smock with a great iron on his legs, broken shoes and an old rag for a hat, smothered in mud from shoe to rag. He looked like some monster thrown up by the earth.

I was confused by his comment. Surely he didn’t think I was responsible for the noise of wind and waves, let alone the ringing of the bells? Did he think I was some kind of combined weather god and campanologist? Before I could seek clarification of this confusion, however, the man had seized me by the lapels and raised me until my eyes were level with the empty pits of his own raw soul’s-windows. In his hand I saw a glint of metal, maybe not a knife proper, but some sharp implement, more than capable of performing a knife’s work, a razor perhaps.

“Please don’t cut my throat sir,” I pleaded, deducing that he was unlikely to be a roaming barber and that a piece of throat cutting was his most likely intention. “I don’t mean no harm nor nuffin.”

“Tell us your name boy.”

“Jed, sir. Only I’m not a boy, I’m 37.”

He looked confused. “agin boy, word it once more.”

“Jed,” I repeated. It is, I have to confess, a somewhat unusual name.

“Show us where you live, Jed,” he said. “Pint out the place.”

I raised my arm to the house I reside in.

The man suddenly raised me above his head and tilted me like a windmill, as if I really were some small boy. It was supposed to terrify me, I know, but actually it was great fun, like a fairground ride. ‘wheeeee’ I thought to myself, but daren’t say.

“I want you to git me a file and some wittles. You lead on to the house and don’t try no funnies wi’ me or I’ll have your ‘eart and liver out.”

We started walking towards my house.

“No tricks now lad,” he repeated, “I’m not alone.”

“Are you not?” I couldn’t see anyone.

“Na, there’s a young lad I’m with in comparison with whom I am an angel. He likes to feast off little boys and only I am stopping him from eating you here and now."

“Does the prison diet cater for that?” I asked, intrigued.

The man looked confused.

“Children,” I said, “how did your friend manage in prison? Did he have his own child-based diet specially prepared for him? Where do they find the children for your friend to eat?”

He put his face close to that of my own, as if to burn the very skin from my face with his foul breath.

“On islands asking too many questions, boy.”

We made our way to my house, with the man’s strange friend apparently following on behind so quietly that I couldn’t hear a single footstep, even though he must be clad in the same clanking chains as his colleague.

“Doesn’t your friend want to come in the house out of the cold?” I said as we went inside.

“No, no, it’s fine. He’s a heavy smoker and he doesn’t want to bring it in the house.”

What a considerate child-eater I thought to myself, though didn’t say.

A key personality flaw I myself confess to is an unwillingness to admit my ignorance. Hence it wasn’t until I returned home and looked up the word whittles in the dictionary that I realised that it referred to cutting small shavings from a piece of wood. It just so happened that I have a bucket of whittled wood shavings to hand from an adventure I’d had the previous week (see the Wood Whittling Problem).

I am also an enthusiastic collector or stationery and the boatman brings me regular supplies of a wide range of filing mechanisms. I brought the fierce man a taster selection in a range of colours: plain ring binders, lever arch files, spring-bound box files, an expandable concertina-like paper file and a selection of document wallets and square cut folders in an assortment of colours.

“Wassis?” he said, holding up a purple lever arch file.

“It’s a purple lever arch,” I said.

He looked at me speechless for a short time as I explained in rudimentary terms the differences between the types of filing mechanism I had provided. “I recommend a colour-based filing system. For example you could have all personal materials in purple files, all material relating to your arrest and detention in yellow and newscuttings about your escapades in blue.

He then held up the bucket of whittles I’d given him.

“Wot’s this boy.”

“Whittled wood shavings sir, just like you asked for.”

“You’re a special boy aren’t you?” he said eventually. He paused for a while, looking thoughtful, as if devising the perfect filing system in his mind. “I forgot to say boy, as well as files and whittles I need food and something to cut through the chains with.”

“Oh I’ve plenty of food,” I said, “and I have a pair of bolt cutters. You have to be prepared for anything living alone on an island. I don’t have any children though”

“Children?” He seemed confused.

“For your colleague. You said you wanted food and you also, previously, said that your friend only eats children.”

“Oh, he doesn’t just eat children. A pie would be fine. Or a casserole. Curry’s always nice. Anything really.”

While I fetched the food he removed the chains with my bolt cutters. He sighed with pleasure as they fell to the floor.

“It’s good to be free of the chains boy,” he said. “Chains turn a man into a mere beast, a work-slave, a nothing. Freedom is unbound legs and arms.”

“I’ve bought you food ,” I said. I usually have a store of things in my larder. “A nice roast – carrot and nut. Your first meal as a free man.”

He looked perplexed, exactly the same face as when I’d supplied him with the filing.

“Carrot? Nut? Roast?”

“We have a vegetian diet on the island, all home-grown organic. We do have geep’s milk though, so I hope you’re not vegan?”

“Geep?”

“It’s a sheep/goat cross. The milk is very nice and the cheese has a unique taste.”

“Half-breeds. Bah, I don’t drink no half-breed milk. Do you not have no meat at all?”

“No, I’m afraid not. How about leek and asparagus tart?”

“Baa, I’d rather starve. Food isn’t food without meat in it. “Do you have any drink at least?”

“I have a full range of herbal …” he cut me short with a gesture as blunt as his instrument.

“Alcoholic drink, booze, gin, beer, whisky something like that?”

“I have a bottle of turnip wine.

“Ah, that’s more like it. Free from chains and drinking wine like a free man. He took a greedy swig of the bottle, as if he were an escaped prisoner tasting freedom for the first time in decades.

Baa,” he spat the wine out, disgusted. “Wot you trying to do boy, poison me?”

“It’s not very nice is it. We don’t get any mainland alcohol on the island, Alun’s turnip wine is the best we can do.”

“I had better booze in prison. Oh well, at least I’m not in chains. Wot time is it boy?”

“It’s nearly midday.”

“Put the TV on boy, it’s time for my favourite TV programme. ‘Real Prison Break outs’. I watches it every week I does.”

“We don’t get that programme,” I said.

“But it’s MainlandTV 1,” he said, “you don’t get MainlandTV1?”

“We don’t get any of the mainland channels,” I said, “not out here. We just get the ‘In your region’ programme and repeats of snooker championships from the late 1970s.”

He didn’t believe me and made me turn the TV on. The only programmes showing were an ‘In your region’ film about the struggles of a local tobacconist and a highlights package of Doug Mountjoy versus David Taylor from the fourth round of the 1978 tournament.

“Bah, it’s rubbish,” he complained, “the standard of breakbuilding is diabolical. He could have gone into the pack off that black, now he’s out of position.” Without waiting to see Mountjoy’s response he turned the TV off in disgust.

“Do you have any music at least?”

“Ah, there I can help you,” I said, fetching my banjolele from my room.”

“What’s that?” he asked, as if he’d never seen a banjolele before.

“It’s a cross between a banjo and a ukele. It’s hard to play, but worth it, it produces an amazing sound.” I played a song, a composition of my own doings.

“You don’t have no CDs then?.”

“My tape recorder broke, I’m afraid,” I said.

“Youtube?” he suggested, though with a hint of pecisimism, as if ground down by years of imprisonment on the hulks.

“Oh yes.”

“Ah, well then.”

There was a pause.

“Well then boy. The internet. Youtube.”

“Oh, I see. No, I only get the internet for a couple of hours a day, due to the satellite having gone astray. I won’t be able to go online again until 8.00 tonight.”

“Hmm.” He said. “How annoying.”

It is, I agreed. “In fact I wrote a song about it. Would you like to hear it?”

“You’d better not,” he said, “the young man I’m with hates the banjolele, he’s been known to kill banjolele players.”

There was a considerable pause, as if the man was enjoying the peace and tranquillity of island life, free from the prison hulks.

“No TV, no meat, no booze, no music, what do you do with your time?”

“I write novels,” I said.

“Historical fiction?” he asked hopefully.

“No, New York murder mysteries.”

“Bah, I don’ts wanna read about murders,” he complained, “I want to escape the drudgery of my murderous, evil life, not read about more murders.”

We sat there in silence, the sea raging in the distance, the wind rattling very timbers of the house and the geep, bleating in wind-induced terror.

“Are you sure your friend doesn’t want to come inside?” I asked. “It can’t be much fun for him out there in this weather.”

The man glared at me. “My friend’s fine,” he said, “he considers this weather bracing.”

As he spoke he rose up out of the chair.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’m going back to the ships,” he said. “I’m sick of this place, no telly, no booze, no company and lousy food. I’m better off on the hulks.”

“Is your friend going as well?” I shouted after him.

There was silence for a while, then, unexpectedly the door opened and the man returned. However, he hadn't come to stay. He picked up a set of files of assorted colours.

“I’ll take these files with me mind, they’ll come in useful. I like to keep cuttings about my crimes. These lever-arched files will be perfect.”

So saying he turned his back on me and returned to the life to which he was bound: drudgery and misery on a prison hulk.