Hell (13 page)

When I’ve
finished the last one, I lie back on my bed and reluctantly pick up Billy
Little’s twelve-page essay. I turn the first page. I cannot believe what I’m
reading. He has such command of language, insight, and that rare gift of making
the mundane interesting that I finish every word, before switching off the
light a few minutes after ten. I have a feeling that you’re going to hear a lot
more about this man, and not just from me.

I am woken in
the middle of the night by rap music blasting out from a cell on the other side
of the block. I can’t imagine what it must be like if you’re trying to sleep in
the next cell, or even worse in the bunk below.

I’m told that
rap music is the biggest single cause of fights breaking out in prison. I’m not
surprised. I had to wait until it was turned off before I could get back to
sleep. I didn’t wake again until eight minutes past six. Amazingly, Terry can
sleep through anything.

I write for two
hours, and as soon as I’ve completed the first draft of what happened
yesterday, I strip down to my underpants, put a towel round my waist, and place
another one on the end of the bed with a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo
next to it.

My cell door is
opened at eight
twentythree
. I’m out of the starting
gate like a thoroughbred, sprint along the corridor and into the shower room.
Three of the four showers are already occupied by faster men than I.

However, I
still manage to capture the fourth stall, and once I’ve taken a long
press-button shower, I feel clean for the first time in days.

When I return
to my cell, Terry is still fast asleep, and even a prison officer unlocking the
door doesn’t disturb him. The new officer introduces himself as Ray Marcus, and
explains that he works in the censor’s department and is the other half of June
Stelfox
, who took care of my correspondence on House
Block Three. His job is to check every item of mail a prisoner is sent, to make
sure that they’re not receiving anything that is against the regulations: razor
blades, drugs, money – or even food. To be fair, although the censors open
every letter, they don’t read them. Ray is carrying a registered package which
he slits open in front of me, and extracts a Bible.
The eleventh
in nine days.
Like the others, I donate it to the chapel. He then asks
if he can help in any way with my mail problem. Ray, as he prefers to be
called, is courteous and seems almost embarrassed by the fact that I’m not
allowed to open my own post. I tell him not to worry, because I haven’t opened
my own post for years.

I hand over
three large brown envelopes containing all the letters I’ve received the day
before, plus the first week (70 pages) of my handwritten script, together with
twelve first-class stamps. I ask if they can all be sent back to my PA, Alison,
so that she can carry on as if I was on holiday or abroad. He readily agrees,
but points out that as senior censor, he is entitled to read anything that I am
sending out.

‘That’s fine by
me,’ I tell him.

‘I’d rather
wait until it’s published,’ he says with a grin. ‘After all, I’ve read
everything else you’ve written.’

When he leaves
he doesn’t close my door, as if he knows what a difference this simple gesture makes
to a man who will be locked up for twenty-two hours every day. This privilege
lasts only for a few minutes before another officer strolling by slams it shut,
but I am grateful nevertheless.

Breakfast.
A bowl of cornflakes with UHT
milk from a carton that has been open, and not seen a fridge, for the past
twenty-four hours.
Wonderful.

Another officer
arrives to announce that the Chaplain would like to see me.
Glorious
escape.
He escorts me to the chapel – no search this time – where David
Powe
is waiting for me. He is wearing the same pale beige
jacket, grey flannel trousers and probably the same dog collar as he did when
he conducted the service on Sunday. He is literally down at heel. We chat about
how I’m settling in – doesn’t everyone? –
and
then go
on to discuss the fact that his sermon on Cain and Abel made it into
Private Eye
. He chuckles, obviously
enjoying the notoriety.

David then
talks about his wife, who’s the headmistress of a local primary school, and has
written two books for HarperCollins on religion. They have two children, one
aged thirteen and the other sixteen. When he talks about his parish – the other
prisoners – it doesn’t take me long to realize that he’s a deeply committed
Christian, despite his doubting and doubtful flock of murderers, rapists and
drug addicts. However, he is delighted to hear that my cell-mate Terry reads
the Bible every day. I confess to having never read Hebrews.

David asks me
about my own religious commitment and I tell him that when I was the
Conservative candidate for Mayor of London, I became aware of how many
religions were being
practised
in the capital, and if
there was a God, he had a lot of disparate groups representing him on Earth. He
points out that in
Belmarsh
there are over a hundred
Muslims, another hundred Roman Catholics, but that the majority of inmates are
still C of E.

‘What about the
Jews?’ I ask him.

‘Only one or
two that I know of,’ he replies.

‘Their family
upbringing and sense of community is so strong that they rarely end up in the
courts or prison.’

When the hour
is up – everything seems to have an allocated time – he blesses me, and tells
me that he hopes to see me back in church on Sunday.

As it’s the
biggest cell in the prison, he most certainly will.

Mr
Weedon
is waiting at the
chapel door – sorry, barred gate – to escort me back to my cell. He says that
Mr
Marsland
wants to see me
again. Does this mean that they know when I’ll be leaving
Belmarsh
and where I’ll be going? I ask
Mr
Weedon
but receive no response. When I arrive at
Mr
Marsland’s
office,
Mr
Loughnane
and
Mr
Gates are also
present. They all look grim. My heart sinks and I now understand why
Mr
Weedon
felt unable to answer
my question.

Mr
Marsland
says that Ford Open
Prison have turned down my application because they feel they can’t handle the
press interest, so the whole matter has been moved to a higher level. For a
moment I wonder if I will ever get out of this hellhole. He adds, hoping it
will act as a sweetener, that he plans to move me into a single cell because
Fossett
(Terry) was caught phoning the
Sun
.

‘I can see that
you’re disappointed about Ford,’ he adds, ‘but we’ll let you know where you’ll
be going, and when, just as soon as they tell us.’ I get up to leave.

‘I wonder if
you’d be willing to give another talk on creative writing?’ asks
Mr
Marsland
. ‘After your last
effort, several other prisoners have told us that they want to hear you speak.’

‘Why don’t I
just do an eight-week
course,
’

I reply, ‘as it
seems we’re going to be stuck with each other for the foreseeable future?’ I
immediately feel guilty about my sarcasm.

After all, it
isn’t their fault that the Governor of Ford hasn’t got the guts to try and
handle a tricky problem. Perhaps he or she should read the Human Rights Act,
and learn that this is not a fair reason to turn down my request.

A woman officer
unlocks the cell door, a cigarette hanging from her mouth,
*
and tells
Terry he has a visitor. Terry can’t believe it and tries to think who it could
be. His father rarely speaks to him, his mother is dead, his brother is dying
of Aids,
he’s
lost touch with his sister and his
cousin’s in jail for murder.

He climbs down
from the top bunk, smiles for the first time in days, and happily troops out
into the corridor, while I’m locked back in. I take advantage of Terry’s
absence and begin writing the second draft of yesterday’s diary.

Terry returns
to the cell an hour later, dejected. A mistake must have been made because
there turned out to be no visitor. They left him in the waiting room for over
an hour while the other prisoners enjoyed the company of their family or
friends.

I sometimes
forget how lucky I am.

Association.
As I leave my cell and walk along the top
landing, Derek Jones, a young double-strike prisoner, says he wants to show me
something, and invites me back to his cell. He is one of those inmates whose
tariff is open-ended, and although his case comes up for review by the Parole
Board in 2005, he isn’t confident that they will release him.

‘I hear you’re
writing a book,’ he says. ‘But are you interested in things they don’t know
about out there?’ he asks, staring through his barred window. I nod. ‘Then I’ll
tell you something they don’t even know about in here.’ He points to a large
stereo in the corner of the room – probably the one that kept me awake last
night. It resembles a spaceship. ‘That’s my most valuable possession in the
world,’ he says. I don’t interrupt.

‘But I’ve got a
problem.’ I still say nothing. ‘It runs on batteries, ‘
cause
I haven’t got any ice.’

‘Ice?
Why would you need ice for a ghetto blaster?’

‘In Cell
Electricity,’ he says laughing.

‘Ah, I see.’

‘Have you any
idea how much batteries cost?’

‘No,’ I tell
him.

‘£6.40 a time,
and then they’re only good for twelve hours, so I wouldn’t be able to afford
any tobacco if I had to buy new batteries every week.’ I still haven’t worked
out where all this is leading. ‘But I never have to buy any batteries, do I?’

‘Don’t you?’ I
say.

‘No,’ he
replies, and then goes to a shelf behind his bed, and extracts a biro. He
flicks off the little cap on the bottom and pulls out the refill, which has a
coil of thin wire wrapped around it. He continues. ‘First, I make an earth by
scraping off a little paint from the water pipe behind my bed,
then
I take off the plastic cover from the strip light on
the ceiling and attach the other end of the wire to the little box inside the
light.’ Derek can tell that I’m just about following this cunning subterfuge,
when he adds, ‘Don’t worry about the details, Jeff, I’ve drawn you a
diagram
.
That way,’ he says, ‘I get an uninterrupted supply of electricity at Her
Majesty’s expense.’

My immediate
reaction is, why isn’t he on the outside doing a proper job? I thank him and
assure Derek the story will get a mention in my story.

‘What do I get
out of it?’ he asks. ‘Because when I leave this place, all I have to my name
other than that stereo is the ninety quid discharge money they give you.’
*

I assure Derek
that my publishers will pay him a fee for the use of the diagram if it appears
in the book. We shake on it.

Mr
Weedon
returns to tell me that
I am being moved to a single cell. Terry immediately becomes petulant and
starts shouting that he’d been promised a single cell even before I’d arrived.

‘And you would
have got one,
Fossett
,’
Mr
Weedon
replies, ‘if you hadn’t phoned the press and grassed
on your cell-mate for a few quid.’

Terry continues
to harangue the officer and I can only wonder how long he will last with such a
short fuse once he returns to the outside world.

I gather up my
possessions and move across from Cell 40 to 30 on the other side of the
corridor. My fourth move in nine days.

Taal
, a six-foot four-inch Ghanaian who was convicted of
murdering a man in
Peckham
despite claiming that he
was in Brighton with his girlfriend at the time, returns to his old bunk in
Cell 40. I feel bad about depriving
Taal
of his
private cell, and it becomes yet another reason I want to move to a D-cat
prison as soon as possible, so that he can have his single cell back.

I spend an hour
filling up my cellophane bag, carrying it across the corridor, emptying it,
then
rearranging my belongings in Cell 30. I have just
completed this task when my new cell door is opened, and I’m ordered to go down
to the hotplate for supper.