New and Collected Stories by Alan; Sillitoe

time is up. I won’t be worth a threepenny bit to anybody here, which will be all the thanks I get for being honest in the only way I know. For when the governor told me to be honest it was meant to be in his way not mine, and if I kept on being honest in the way he wanted and won my race for him he’d see I got the cushiest six months still left to run; but in my own way, well, it’s not allowed, and if I find a way of doing it such as I’ve got now then I’ll get what-for in every mean trick he can set his mind to. And if you look at it in my own way, who can blame him? For this is war – and ain’t I said so? – and when I hit him in the only place he knows he’ll be sure to get his own back on me for not collaring that cup when his heart’s been set for ages on seeing himself standing up at the end of the afternoon to clap me on the back as I take the cup from Lord Earwig or some such chinless wonder with a name like that. And so I’ll hit him where it hurts a lot, and he’ll do all he can to get his own back, tit for tat, though I’ll enjoy it most because I’m hitting first, and because I planned it longer. I don’t know why I think these thoughts are better than any I’ve ever had, but I do, and I don’t care why. I suppose it took me a long time to get going on all this because I’ve had no time and peace in all my bandit life, and now my thoughts are coming pat and the only trouble is I often can’t stop, even when my brain feels as if it’s got cramp, frostbite and creeping paralysis all rolled into one and I have to give it a rest by slap-dashing down through the brambles of the sunken lane. And all this is another uppercut I’m getting in first at people like the governor, to show how – if I can – his races are never won even though some bloke always comes unknowingly in first, how in the end the governor is going to be doomed while blokes like me will take the pickings of his roasted bones and dance like maniacs around his Borstal’s ruins. And so this story’s like the race and once again I won’t bring off a winner to suit the governor; no, I’m being honest like he told me to, without him knowing what he means, though I don’t suppose he’ll ever come in with a story of his own, even if he reads this one of mine and knows who I’m talking about.
    I’ve just come up out of the sunken lane, kneed and elbowed, thumped and bramble-scratched, and the race is two thirds over, and a voice is going like a wireless in my mind saying that you’ve had enough of feeling good like the first man on earth on a frosty morning, and you’ve known how it is to be taken bad like that last man on earth on a summer’s afternoon, then you get at last to being like the only man on earth and don’t give a bogger about either good or bad, but just trot on with your slippers slapping the good dry soil that at least would never do you a bad turn. Now the words are like coming from a crystal-set that’s broken down, and something’s happening inside the shell-case of my guts that bothers me and I don’t know why or what to blame it on, a grinding near my ticker as though a bag of rusty screws is loose inside me and I shake them up every time I trot forward. Now and again I break my rhythm to feel my left shoulder-blade by swinging a right hand across my chest as if to rub the knife away that has somehow got stuck there. But I know it’s nothing to bother about, that more likely it’s caused by too much thinking that now and again I take for worry. For sometimes I’m the greatest worrier in the world I think (as you twigged I’ll bet from me having got this story out) which is funny anyway because my mam don’t know the meaning of the word so I don’t take after her; though dad had a hard time of worry all his life up to when he filled his bedroom with hot blood and