Purgatory: A Prison Diary Volume 2 (11 page)

‘Follow me,’ he says. We troop across rough grass littered
with rubbish and uneaten food to end up outside a cell window on the ground
floor of C wing. I stare through the bars at paintings that cover almost all
his wall space. There’s even a couple on the bed. I’m left in no doubt that
he’s the right man for the job.

‘How about a picture of the prison?’ he suggests.

‘Yes,’ I tell him, ‘especially if it’s from your window,
because I have an almost identical view two blocks over.’ (See plate section.)

I then ask him how he would like to be paid. Shaun suggests
that as he is leaving soon, it may be easier to send a cheque directly to his
home, so his girlfriend can bank it. He says he’d like to think about a price
overnight and discuss it with me during exercise tomorrow; I’m not allowed to
visit his cell as he resides on another block so we can only talk through his
barred window.

Supper: vegetable stir-fry and a mug of Volvic.

I’ve negotiated two art deals today, so I feel a little
better. Because the library was closed and I have finished The Glass Bead Game,
I have nothing new to read until it opens again tomorrow. I spend the rest of
the evening writing about Sergio.

‘
talisman
of my existence. I seem
to be the only thing that doesn’t move.’

When I reach the hotplate Dale gives a curt nod, a sign he
needs to see me; Sergio also nods. I leave the hotplate empty-handed, bar a
slice of toast and two appointments. I return to my cell and eat a bowl of my
cornflakes with my milk.

First peaceful night in weeks.
Yesterday I visited the three prisoners with noisy stereos and the two inmates
who go on shouting at each other all through the night. But not before I had
been asked to do so by several other prisoners on the spur. I got two
surprises: firstly, no one was willing to accompany me – they were all happy to
point out which cells they were in, but no more than that. The second surprise
was that all of the transgressors, without exception, responded favourably to
my courteous request with either, ‘Not me, gov,’ or, ‘Sorry, Jeff, I’ll turn it
down,’ and in one case. ‘I’ll turn it off at nine, Jeff.’
Interesting.

Breakfast.
A prisoner in the queue
for the hotplate asks me if I’m moving cells today.

‘No,’ I tell him. ‘What makes you think that?’

The name card outside your cell has disappeared, always the
first sign that you’re on the move.’

I laugh, and explain, ‘It’s been removed every day – a sort
of’

Gym.
The treadmill is not working
again, so I start with the rower and manage 1,956 metres in ten minutes. I
would have done better if I hadn’t started chatting to the inmate on the next
rower. All across his back is tattooed the word MONSTER, though, in truth, he’s
softly spoken and, whenever I’ve come across him in the corridor, friendly. I
ask what his real name is.

‘Martin,’ he whispers, ‘but only my mother calls me that.
Everyone else calls me Monster.’ He’s managed 2,470 metres in ten minutes
despite chatting to me.

He tells me that in January, when he arrived at Wayland, he
weighed seventeen and a half stone. He is a taxi driver from Essex and admits
that it was easy to put on weight in that job. Now he tips the scales at
thirteen stone five pounds, and his girlfriend has to visit him every two weeks
just to make sure that she’ll still recognize him when he’s released. He was
sen-tenced to three years for transporting cannabis from one Ilford club to
another.

About a third of the men in this prison have been convicted
of some crime connected with cannabis, and most of them will say, I repeat say,
that they would never deal in hard drugs. In fact, Darren goes further and,
snarling, adds that he would try to dissuade anyone who did. If cannabis
were
to be legalized – and for most of the well-rehearsed
reasons, I remain unconvinced that it should – the price would fall by around
70 per cent, tax revenues would be enormous and prison numbers would drop
overnight.

Many young prisoners complain, ‘It’s your lot who are
smoking the stuff, Jeff. In ten years’ time it won’t even be considered a
crime.’ Jimmy admits that he couldn’t meet the demand from his customers, and
that he certainly never needed to do any pushing. Darren adds that although he
and Jimmy covered roughly the same territory in Ipswich they hadn’t come across
each other until they ended up in jail, which will give you an idea of just how
large the market is.

Just in case you’ve forgotten, I’m still in the gym. Monster
leaves me to join Darren and Jimmy on the bench press, where he manages to pump
ten reps of 250 pounds. I also turn to the weights where I achieve ten curls at
50 pounds. This is followed by a spell on the bicycle, where I break the world
record by peddling three miles in twelve minutes and fifty-four seconds. Pity
it’s the world record for running.

Mr Maiden, the senior gym instructor, reintroduces me to the
medicine ball, which I haven’t come in contact with since I left school. I
place the large leather object behind my head, raise my shoulders as in an
ordinary sit-up, and then pass it up to him. He then drops it back on top of
me. Simple, I think, until I reach my fifth attempt, by which time I’m
exhausted and Mr Maiden is unable to hide his mirth at my discomfort. He knows
only too well that I haven’t done this exercise for over forty years, and what
the result would be.

‘We’ll have you doing three sets of fifteen with a minute
interval between sets before you’re released,’ he promises.

‘I hope not,’ I tell him, without explanation. I then carry
out a fifteen-minute warm down and stretching as my trainer in London (Karen)
would have demanded. At the end of the session

I am first at the gate, because I’ll have to be in and out
of the shower fairly quickly if I’m to get to the library before the doors are
locked.

Jog to my cell, strip, shower, change, jog to the library.
Still sweating, but nothing I can do about it. Steve (conspiracy to murder) is
on duty behind the desk in his position as chief librarian. Because Steve’s the
senior Listener, he’s allowed to wear his own clothes and is often mistaken for
a member of staff. I return Famous Trials and take out Twenty-one Short Stories
by Graham Greene.

Once I’ve left the library I walk straight across the
corridor to the chapel and discover there are thirty worshippers in the
congregation this week. From their dress, the majority must come from the local
village. The black man sitting next to me, who was among the seven prisoners
who attended last week, tells me it’s the biggest turnout he’s ever seen. This
week a Methodist minister called Mary conducts the service, accompanied by an
Anglican vicar called Val. Mary’s sermon is topical.

She talks about the World Athletics Championships and her
feelings for those competitors who did not achieve what they had set out to do,
but for many of them there will be another chance. I have now attended four
consecutive church services, and the minister always pitches the message at
what he or she imagines will be of interest to the inmates. Each time they have
failed to treat us as if we might just be normal human beings.

People who have not been to prison tend to fall into two
categories. The majority who treat you as if you’re a ‘convict on the run’
while the minority treat you as if you are in their front room.

After the blessing, we gather in an ante-room for coffee and
biscuits with the locals. No need to describe them as they don’t differ greatly
from the kind of parishioners who attend church services up and down the
country every Sunday morning. Average age double that of the prisoners. At
twelve we are sent back to our cells. No search.
Unaccompanied.

Lunch.
I haven’t had a chance to
speak to Dale or Sergio yet, so I fix appointments with Dale at 2 pm and Sergio
at 3 pm. I leave the hotplate with a portion of macaroni liberally covered in
cheese.

While we are waiting in the long queue, Darren tells me when
it used to be almost all macaroni with little sign of any cheese. Nobody
thought to comment about this, until it became clear that the allocation of
cheese was becoming smaller and smaller as each week passed. Still no one did
anything about it, until one week, when there was virtually no
cheese,
the officer on duty at last began to show some
interest. The first thing he discovered was that the same cook had been on for
the previous four Saturdays and Sundays, so the following weekend he kept an
eye on that particular inmate. He quickly discovered that on Saturday night the
prisoner in question was returning to his cell with a lump of cheese the size
of a pillow (5kg). It was when three loaves of bread also went missing the same
evening that the officer decided to report the incident to the governor. The
following Saturday night a team of officers raided the prisoner’s cell hoping
to find out what he was up to. They discovered that he was running a very
successful business producing Welsh rarebit, which, when toasted, was passed
from cell to cell through the bars of his little window.

‘And damn good they were,’ adds Jimmy, licking his lips.

‘How did he manage to toast them?’ I demanded.

‘On every wing there is a communal iron, which always ended
up in Mario’s cell on a Saturday evening,’ explained Darren.

‘How much did the chef charge?’

Tor two nights’ supply, a two-pound
phonecard.’

‘And how did they punish him?’

The iron was confiscated, and Mario demoted to washer-up,
with twenty-one days added to his sentence. But they had to reinstate him after
a couple of months because so many inmates complained about the standard of
cooking dropping during the weekends. So he was brought back, and after another
six months they also forgot about the twenty-one-day added sentence.

‘And what is Mario in for?’ I ask.

Tax evasion – three years – and the fraud squad needed to be
just as sharp to discover what he was up to then,’ says Darren as we leave the
hotplate. I make a mental note to make sure I meet him.

Dale wants to talk to me about my canteen list for next week
and has set an upper limit of £20. ‘Otherwise the screws will become suspicious,’
he explains. £20 will be quite enough as I’m still credited each week with
£12.50 from my own account.

Dale’s also solved my writing pad problem, because he’s
somehow got his hands on three A4 pads, for which he charges me £4 I would
happily pay £10 as I’m down to twenty pages of my last pad, but this new supply
should last me a month.

I call Mary at Grantchester, but there is no reply. I try
London but only get Alison’s voice on the answer machine. I forgot she’s away
on holiday. In any case, it’s Sunday.

Supper.
The ham looks good, but I’m
down for the vegetarian dish and you can’t change your mind once you’ve signed
the weekly menu sheet Dale thinks about giving me a slice, but as my bete noire
is on duty behind the hotplate, he doesn’t risk it. Every Sunday you are given
a meal sheet which rotates on a four-week cycle (see opposite); you fill in
your selection from a list posted outside the main office, giving the kitchen
advance notice of how much they will have to order of each item.
Can’t complain about that.

Banged up for the next fourteen hours.
I begin The Basement Room by Graham Greene. His description of minor characters
is breathtaking in its simplicity and the story, although complex, still
demands that you turn the page. I consider it a reflection on the Nobel
Committee, not Mr Greene, that he has never won the prize for literature.

Wake and wonder how long it will take the police to close
their file on the Kurds and allow me to be transferred to an open prison. I
heard a story yesterday about a prisoner who wanted to do it the other way
round. He put in an application to be transferred from a D-cat open prison to a
C-cat – a more secure environment with a tougher regime. His reasons seem
strange but, I’m told, are not uncommon.

He was serving a twenty-two-year sentence for murder. After
five years, they moved him from an A-cat to a B-cat, which is a little more
relaxed. After a further twelve years they transferred him to Wayland. At
Wayland he became an enhanced prisoner with all the privileges that affords. He
was also chief gardener, which allowed him to be out of his cell for most of
the day and gave him an income of more than £30 a week. In his own world he
wanted for nothing, and the governor considered him to be a model prisoner.

After twenty years he was granted D-cat status as part of
his preparation for returning to the outside world. He was transferred to Ford
Open Prison in Sussex to begin his rehabilitation.

He lasted at Ford for less than a month. One Saturday
afternoon he absconded and turned himself in at the local police station a few
hours later. He was arrested, charged with attempting to abscond and sent back
to Wayland, where he remained until he had completed his sentence.

The governor at the time couldn’t resist asking him why he’d
absconded. He replied that he couldn’t handle the responsibility of making his
own decisions. He also missed not having a proper job and the ordered
discipline of the Wayland regime. But most of all he missed the high walls that
surrounded the prison because they made him feel safe from all those people on
the outside.

With less than six months to go before the end of his
sentence, he was found in his cell with a piece of silver paper from a KitKat
wrapper, a few grams of heroin and a lighted match. He had even pressed the
emergency button inside his cell to make certain that he was caught. The
governor wasn’t sure what to do, because he knew only too well that the
prisoner had never taken heroin in twenty years. Only six weeks were added to
his sentence and he was released a few months later. Within a month of leaving
prison, he committed suicide.