Illywhacker

He moved from the bed and sat on top of my kerosene heater. The heater was not lit. It was September, already warm, although sometimes I used it when the rains came, to keep the mildew out of my papers. You never saw such rain as we had at Rankin Downs and the youngsters working out in the bush would come back covered in grey slimy mud, snivelling and homesick under their blankets of wet earth.

"I never told a man in twenty years," said Father Moran. "And perhaps I am using the wrong term in calling it a fairy. I never studied these things. It might have been an elf or something. But I'll tell you this, Badgery, whatever he was, he was. And I suppose you're thinking that it was something else, a sparrow, or a doll, and that I was just a little fellow and easily confused. But I know what I saw because I saw its face. It was so cross. You never saw such anger on a human's face. You never saw such a filthy scowl as the one it gave me. It was the sort of expression you would expect a bull ant to have, if it had a proper face to give expressions with. Do you follow me?"

He went on and on. I was not only alarmed by the emotion, I was also concerned for my heater. You do not accumulate these things easily, even in Rankin Downs. I had some Feltex on the floor, six bookshelves, a chair, a desk. I did not get this stuff by violence or bribery or dobbing-in my fellow prisoners. I got them by using frailty and decency. This is a very potent combination. It does things to screws who you would otherwise describe as heartless and before they can help themselves they are running to fetch you a square of carpet from their own house and smiling at you like a mother when you have it. I got this sort of treatment at some cost, for making yourself into a frail man is a dangerous thing and much of it is not reversible. I lost an inch in height during my ten years in Rankin Downs and I have had trouble with my sciatica ever since. My skin never recovered its tone. But excuse me, because the damn heater is crumbling beneath the priest and it is not cowardice that stops me telling him, but his story which is reaching a delicate stage and has become frail and flowery and as easily bruised as a baby's arm. Attendez-vous!

"I went and got my brother. I begged him to come and look. But he wouldn't come. He laughed at me, Badgery, and he would not come. You can imagine it, can't you? Me knowing this little gent is over there, no more than a cricket pitch away, and my brother refusing to come and look. That was like him. It was so like him. He enjoyed what it did to me."

"Perhaps your father…?"

"My father beat me," the priest said. "For lying."

It was getting late. I could hear the slow diesel thump of the Fergie tractor bringing the trailerful of boys back from work. The kitchen was pumping out its rancid steam and the mechanics were already showered and thumping their tennis ball (bom, bom, bom) against the wall of my hut and Father Moran was demanding something with his eyes. I felt what a dog must feel, a dog who wants to sleep and is interrupted by a master who wants something the dog can't understand. I did all a dog can do. I showed him my eyes. They were a fine colour. I also asked him how fairies might fit in with Catholicism. I thought this might be the trouble. But if it was he wasn't ready to admit it.

It was only the kerosene heater crumpling beneath his sixteen stone that finally brought him to his senses. He broke the mantle and burst the fuel tank and when he picked the whole thing up in his big hands, kero dripping on to his boots, he looked dazed like a man after a traffic accident.

"Oh, Badgery," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm a clumsy fool. I beg your pardon."

There was nothing I could say. My face said what I felt. You are a lucky man to own a kero heater.

"I'll replace it," he said desperately. "The sisters at the convent have some the same."

"Don't worry, Father." I stood with a grunt. I made my kidneys hurt and the pain showed like a shadow on my face. I grimaced and shuffled towards him. "I'll get another."

He looked at me: frail decent Badgery shuffling to pick up the wounded heater. My aim was to make his heart near burst, but this – as I found out later – was not the case at all. But if Moran did not think me frail and decent, he was quite alone in all the gaol.

You would not dream of the numbers of young men in gaol who dream only of being decent men. You won't observe them in such numbers in any other place. I was first amongst them. I was their leader, their example. There was no kindness I would not stoop to perform.

It was my frailty that gave me power. It ruined my body, but I was respected by young ruffians known to have put hot smoothing irons on young girls' faces. They came with offers to protect me.