Free Walking Wounded by William McIlvanney

in you. You know the score here. Every man in here is a long-termer from another place. This is where you get a chance to prepare for outside. You know this is an easy ticket. We’re trying to make a transition here. From hard jails to the real world.’
    â€˜That’s the real world, sur? Broken promises? Synthetic turkey?’
    â€˜The interview’s over, McQueen. Don’t you understand that? And you didn’t get the job. I’ve tried to give you a chance. We’ll do it my way now. And you’ll just listen. In the meantime you’re back yourself. I don’t want any rotten apples in my barrel. You’re a mug. You’ve maybe just worked your ticket to a real jail. I’ll let you know. In the meantime, stew in your juice. I hope you enjoy it. Thing is, you’re not even a violent man. Then you do this. Hoof it.’
    As McQueen turned, one thing was still niggling at the governor’s mind.
    â€˜McQueen!’
    McQueen stopped, turned round.
    â€˜You ate the turkey.’
    â€˜Sorry, sur?’
    â€˜You ate the turkey. And then you ate the pudding. Was the pudding all right, by the way? Was that to your taste?’
    â€˜It wasn’t really, sur.’
    â€˜Oh. What was wrong with that?’
    â€˜Ah don’t like a cold thing and a warm thing put together.’
    â€˜You mean the ice-cream and the hot apple tart?’
    â€˜That’s right, sur.’
    â€˜I hope you like the menu better where you’re going.’
    McQueen was turning away again.
    â€˜But you miss the point,’ the governor said.
    McQueen turned back, practised in patience.
    â€˜You ate the turkey,’ the governor said. ‘You ate the pudding. You ate everything. And then you made your protest. Why?’
    McQueen gave him that habitual look that suggested the world was out to con him.
    â€˜Ah was hungry, sur,’ he said.
    The governor was left staring into the remark. It opened like a window on to a place he had never been. He saw McQueen sitting eating his meal in the big hall. Around him were faces that wouldn’t have been out of place on Notre Dame Cathedral. McQueen was grumbling but nobody else was giving him any support. McQueen was hungry, so he ate everything and then exploded. The precision was where the governor had never been, the precision of passion, the risk of choosing the moment when you try to express utterly what you feel. McQueen, the governor understood with a dismay that would quickly bury the understanding in disbelief like dead leaves, was capable of something of which the governor was not. McQueen was capable of freedom.
    The assistant governor opened the door and looked in.
    â€˜Well?’ he said.
    â€˜We’ll see. He goes back down today. Then I’ll decide.’
    â€˜It’s a bad one. We don’t need that stuff here.’
    â€˜I know that. We’ll see.’
    The assistant governor contrived to make a nod look negative and went out.
    The governor started to sign his mail. When he was finished, he would inspect the kitchens. Then he would have lunch with the assistant governor and Mrs Caldwell, the teacher. They would discuss which inmates might be capable of sitting an external examination, the advisability of an evening creative writing class under a visiting teacher and the case of Branson, who believed he was a genius not being published simply because he was in prison. The afternoon was exactly scheduled. He would leave a little early this evening because he was speaking to the Rotary Club in the nearest town, where he lived. Catriona and the children would be asleep by the time he got back. It was an early rise tomorrow. It was his day off and it was their day for visiting his parents. The drive was long and boring and it only gave them three hours at his parents’ house. But maybe that was just as well. His mother was a woman who had turned into a compendium of elusive ailments which she