Hell (19 page)

The next
subject the
committee discuss
is prison finance. Tony
reports that the Governor, Hazel Banks, has been given a bonus of £24,000 for
bringing
Belmarsh
Prison costs down by four hundred
thousand.

Hardly
something a free enterprise merchant like
myself
could
grumble about. However, Paul feels the money would have been better spent on
inmates’ education and putting electricity into the cells. I have no idea if
these figures are accurate, but Tony confirms that he checked them in Sir David
Ramsbotham’s
(head of the prison service) annual
review.

When the
meeting breaks up, Derek Del Boy Bicknell (murder) – interesting that he has
not been invited to join the committee meeting – asks if he could have a
private word with me. ‘I’ve got something for you to read,’ he says. I walk
across the ground floor from Cell 9 to Cell 6. After he’s offered me a
selection of paperbacks, I discover the real reason he wishes to see me.

He wants to discuss
his appeal, and produces a letter from his solicitor. The main grounds for his
appeal appear to be that his former solicitor advised him not to go into the
witness box when he wanted to. He subsequently sacked the solicitor and his QC.
He has since appointed a new legal team to advise him, but he’s not yet chosen
a QC. Imagine my surprise when I discover one of his grounds for appeal is that
he is unable to read or write, and therefore never properly understood what his
rights were. I look up at a shelf full of books above his bed.

‘You can’t
read?’

‘No, but don’t
tell anyone. You see, I’ve never really needed to as a car salesman.’

This is a
prisoner who carries a great deal of responsibility on the spur. He’s a
Listener and number one on the hotplate. I earlier described him as a man who
could run a private company and I have not changed my mind. Del Boy brings to
mind Somerset Maugham’s moving short story, ‘The Bell Ringer’. However, it’s
still going to be a disadvantage for him not to be able to study his legal
papers. I begin to wonder how many other prisoners fall into the same category,
and worse, just won’t admit it. I go over the grounds of appeal with Del Boy
line by line.

He listens
intently, but can’t make any notes.

Lock-up is
called so I return to my cell to face – delighted to face – another pile of
letters left on my bed by Ray the censor. I realize the stack will be even
greater tomorrow when the papers inform their readers that I will not be going
to an open prison, after Emma Nicholson has dropped her ‘I was only doing my
duty’ barb into an already boiling cauldron.

I’ve now fallen
into a routine, much as I had in the outside world. The big difference is that
I have little or no control over when I can and cannot write, so I fit my hours
round the prison timetable. Immediately after evening lock-up is designated for
reading letters, break, followed by going over my manuscript, break, reading
the book of the week, break, undress, go to bed, break, try to ignore the
inevitable rap music.
Impossible.

Every time I
finish the day’s script, I wonder if there will be anything new to say
tomorrow. However, I’m still on such a steep learning curve, I’ve nowhere near
reached that dizzy height. But I confess I now want to leave
Belmarsh
for pastures new, and
pastures
is
the key word.
I long to walk in green fields and
taste fresh air.

Billy (lifer,
writer,
scholar
) tells me it will be better once I’ve
settled somewhere, and don’t have to spend my energy wondering when and where I
will be for the rest of my sentence. He’s been at
Belmarsh
for two years and seven months, and still doesn’t know where he’s destined for.
Tony (marijuana only, escaped from open prison) warns me that, wherever I go,
I’ll be quickly bored if I don’t have a project to work on.

Thankfully,
writing these diaries has solved that problem.
But for how
long?

A long, hot, sleepless night.
The rap music went on until about
four in the morning, so I was only able to doze off for the odd few minutes.
When it finally ceased, a row broke out between someone called Mitchell, who I
think was in the cell above the music, and another prisoner called
Vaz
, who owned the stereo below. It didn’t take long to
learn what Mitchell planned to do to
Vaz
just as soon
as his cell door was opened. Their language bore a faint resemblance to the
dialogue in a Martin Amis novel, but without any of his style or panache.

Breakfast.
Among my canteen selections is a packet of cereal
called Variety, eight different cereals in little boxes. I start off with
something called Coco Pops. Not bad, but it’s still almost impossible to beat
good old Kellogg’s Cornflakes.

The morning
papers are delivered to the duty officer. They’re full of stories confirming
that my status has been changed from D-cat to C... cat because of Emma
Nicholson’s accusations.

Ms
Labersham
arrives and actually
knocks politely on my cell door, as if I were capable of opening it. She
unlocks ‘the iron barrier’ and tells me that she has come to escort me to my
creative-writing class.

I’m taken to a
smoke-filled waiting room with no chairs, just a table. Well, that’s one way of
guaranteeing a standing ovation. Moments later
a trickle of
prisoners appear
, each carrying his own plastic chair. Once the nine of
them are settled,
Ms
Labersham
reminds everyone that it’s a two-hour session.

She suggests
that I should speak for about an hour and then open it up for a general
discussion.

I’ve never
spoken for an hour in my life; it’s usually thirty minutes, forty at the most
before I take questions. On this occasion I speak for just over forty minutes,
explaining how I took up writing at the age of
thirtyfour
after leaving Parliament, with debts of £427,000 and facing bankruptcy. The
last time I gave this speech was at a conference in Las Vegas as the principal
guest of a US hotel group. They flew me over first class, gave me a suite of
rooms and sent me home with a
cheque
for $50,000.

Today, I’m
addressing nine
Belmarsh
inmates, and
Ms
Labersham
has confirmed that
my prison account will be credited with £2 (a bottle of Highland Spring and a
tube of toothpaste).

When I’ve
finished my talk, I am surprised how lively the discussion is that follows.
One of the prisoners, Michael (aged twenty-one, murder), wants to
talk about becoming a song writer, a subject about which I know very little.
I don’t feel I can tell him that a lyricist is as different to a novelist as a
brain surgeon is from a
gynaecologist
. Michael wants
me to read out his latest effort. It’s already forty verses in length. I offer
you one:

No room, but to leave You call out, calling
for me to come back but all you can hear is the sound of your own voice calling
out my name
Michael heard yesterday that the judge had given him a tariff
of eighteen years.

‘At least it’s
not telephone numbers,’ he says.

‘Telephone numbers?’

‘Nine hundred
and ninety-nine years,’ he replies.

When I finish
reading Michael’s work, the
group discuss
it, before
Terry (burglary, former cell-mate) reads three pages of his novel, which he
hopes to have finished by the time they release him in December.

The
group spend
some time debating the use of bad language in a
novel. Does it tell you anything about the character the author is writing
about? Does it distract from the narrative? They go on to discuss the relative
strengths and weaknesses of Terry’s story.

They don’t pull
any punches.

Tony (marijuana
only) then tells the group that he is writing a textbook on quantum mechanics,
which has been a hobby of his for many years. He explains that his efforts will
add nothing to the genre – his word – but as a project it keeps him occupied
for many hours.

The final
rendering is one of Billy Little’s poems. It’s in a different class to anything
we’ve heard up until then, and everyone in that room knows it.

Crash Bang Slam
Subject despised,
committed wrong, broken wounded, buffeted along, concealed confined, isolated
state, parental tools,
judicial
hate.

Golden cuffs,
silver chains, reformed
pretence
,
jewelled
pains, sapphire screams, diamond faults, brick steel, storage vaults.

Uranium plutonium, nuclear chalice, poison regimes, political
malice, confounded dark,
loomin
’ sin,
atomised
spirits, crushed within.

Seditious
dissent, proletarian class, duplicate religion, misleading mass, ruinous
poverty’s
, reducing
rod, whipping barbarous,
bloodthirsty God.

Liberated justice, equality bound, desecrating capitalists, unholy ground,
revolutionary concept, militant fire, diligent radical, poetic desire.

Billy Little (BX7974)

During the last
few minutes they begin to discuss when we’ll get together again. The matter
that most concerns the group is whether it should be during Association time or
considered as an education class. On this they are equally divided, and I
wonder if they will ever meet again.

12
noon
Lunch.
I open a tin of ham (67p)
,
extract half of it, to
which I add two hard-boiled potatoes (prison issue). During the afternoon, I
devour three digestive biscuits, and swig nearly a whole bottle of Evian. If I
continue at this rate, I’ll be out of water by Saturday, and like so many
prisoners, facing the problem of double-bubble. Do you recall Del Boy cutting a
cigarette in half, and expecting a whole one back the following day?

My appeals
against change of status and being sent to the Isle of Wight are brought round
to my cell for signing.
Ms
Taylor says that the
Deputy Governor wants the forms returned to her office as soon as possible. I
read slowly through the two-page legal document, making only one small
emendation. I sign on the dotted line, but remain convinced that the Home
Office has already made up its mind, and there is nothing I can do about it.
The golden rule seems to be: it mustn’t look as if Archer’s getting special
treatment, even if he’s being treated unjustly.

My cell door is
opened by
Mr
Bentley, who tells me that I must report
to reception as there are several parcels for me to collect.

When I leave
the spur, I am not searched for the first time and the duty officer simply
points to the end of the corridor and says, ‘My colleague will guide you.’ It’s
taken them two weeks to feel confident that I have no interest in escaping or
dealing in drugs. Actually if you tried to escape from
Belmarsh
– and the roof is the furthest anyone has managed – you’d need an architect’s
plan; the whole building is a maze. Even if you work here, I imagine it would
take several weeks before you could confidently find your way around. Sometimes
I wonder how the prison officers find their way out at night.

At the end of
every corridor, a barred gate is opened and I am ushered through it. None of
the gatekeepers seem to be surprised that I’m unaccompanied. I finally arrive
outside the little cubbyhole called reception. The doors are pulled open to
reveal
Mr
Pearson and
Mr
Leech.

‘Good
afternoon, sir,’
Mr
Pearson says, and then quickly
corrects himself, ‘Archer.

I’m afraid we
only have fourteen registered parcels for you this week.’ He begins to remove
them one by one from the shelves behind him. Half an hour later, I am the proud
owner of four more Bibles, three copies of the New Testament, and a prayer
book. I retain one copy of the New Testament, which is leather-bound, as I feel
Terry would appreciate it. I suggest to
Mr
Leech that
the rest should be sent to
Mr
Powe
at the chapel. The other packages consist of three novels, two scripts and a
proposal of marriage from a blonde woman of about fifty, who adds that if I
don’t fancy her, she has a daughter of twenty-four (photo enclosed).

I’ve considered
printing her ‘Dear Geoffrey,’ (sic) letter and photograph, but my solicitors
have advised against it.

When they’ve
opened the final package on the shelf, I point to a box of tissues and ask,
‘Are those also mine by any chance?’

Mr
Pearson looks at
Mr
Leech, and
says, ‘I think they are.’

He passes
across two boxes of tissues, making the whole expedition worthwhile.

Mr
Pearson accompanies me – I say accompanies, because I
didn’t get the feeling of being escorted – back to my cell en route. He tells
me that the prison was built ten years ago by a Canadian architect and
it’s
all
rightangles
.

‘It might have
been more sensible,’ he mutters, ‘to have consulted serving prison officers,
and then we could have pointed out the problems staff and inmates come up
against every day.’ Before I can offer an opinion, I find myself locked back in
my cell.