Evil Relations (39 page)

They empty their pots over the rails and a rain of shit and piss drenches us, the missiles clattering through the wire mesh that separates the floors. Wiping the stinking filth from my eyes, I see the screws supposed to be guarding us grinning from the shelter of the cell arches.

There is every kind of pervert on Rule 43, but each morning it’s my name the cons shout as they bang their fists against the rails. I shut my eyes, needing to get back into my cell, to be alone behind a closed door in order to think myself back to the only safe place I’ve ever known.

I have to wait until we’re allowed back to our cells, but the minute I’m through the door I crawl into my bunk and pull the thin cover over my head, shutting out the light and giving in to the darkness that surrounds me.

Time passes quicker than you might expect in prison. A new year begins; a new decade. I daren’t hope that 1970 will be good for me, but it’s hard to imagine anything worse than the last few years and enough for now to know that the ’60s are over.

Then out of the blue, a reminder. January is only a few days old when I get a visit from Mattin and Tyrrell, the two detectives who gave me such a hard time during the Moors investigation. They arrive with a folio of photographs and ask me to go through them to see if anything of significance occurs to me. It doesn’t, but I agree to return to the moors and Derbyshire with them in the near future. They tell me the visit has to be confidential; they don’t want the press finding out about it. Neither do I.

Soon afterwards, one of the screws opens my cell at 5.30 a.m. and tells me to get changed into my civvies and come to reception. Two other policemen are waiting to drive me back to Manchester. Once there, I’m handed over to Mattin and Tyrrell again and we head in an unmarked car up to the moor and to a couple of other places I seem to remember visiting with Ian and Myra. I grit my teeth the entire time, or so it seems, feeling as if I’m being pitched into the nightmare all over again. Even the wind strikes my face with the same chill roughness, making me sway on my feet in the long grass that wraps itself around my ankles so securely it’s as if it won’t let go. We’re looking for a particular spot that’s of interest to police, but I’m lost and am glad to my soul when Mattin and Tyrrell – both of them behaving very civilly towards me – suggest returning to the station to take another look at Brady’s bleak photographs. After a couple of hours, they accept that there’s nothing else I can tell them and call someone to drive me to Walton. Being back in my cell is an odd sort of relief. I hope with every breath in my body that I never have to go back to the moor again.

Things change in the prison: Rule 43ers are ‘re-housed’ in another area, on a landing above the normal cons, which means an end to the putrid morning downpour. We have our own screws now, Paddy and Mr Heywood, a better breed of prison officer. I’ve been placed in a cell with two of the worst and most unrepentant sex offenders within these walls – I wish the do-gooders of this world could spend a week with them. After evening lock-up, my cell door remains unofficially open for a couple of hours and I play chess with the screws. Life seems a bit less pointless; I even have a guitar and play the songs that form the soundtrack to my 22 years.

I’m beginning to feel a bit more at ease with myself. Routines are rigid and I spend 23 hours a day in my cell, but the silent hours comfort me. I sit on my bunk – the top one – looking out through the bars and listening to the sound of my mind slowing down. The green filth of memory has stopped curdling inside my skull. I am becoming self-aware again, realising that something is healing within, and the pain subsides as the past takes on a different shape. I don’t know when I first became ill; I only know that part of me is getting better.

But my recovery is far from complete. I am paranoid, suspicious of everyone outside Walton. Rule 43 allows me only closed visits; I sit in a small cubicle, separated from my visitor by a thick seven-foot-tall sheet of armoured glass. Joyce comes alone; Dad and Maureen visit together. I sense their unease and watch their body language obsessively. When my eyes meet theirs, I know that they are lying to me in some way – I feel it, even behind the glass. Afterwards, I return to my cell and lie quietly on my bunk, hands behind my head, staring up at the ceiling. I feel as if something is approaching out of sight, first the breeze of trouble, then the gale.

In the exercise yard, I walk the line, those painted circles and stripes on the concrete. I dig my hands deeper into my pockets, thinking. I know Maureen feels the pressure most of all, and I want to
do
something – at least I’m well enough to know that I should help her. She and the boys and Dad have been re-housed in Moss Side and my guts churn at the thought of them there, close to Tom, the man I found her with on the stairwell in the shebeen.

Time passes. Dad visits alone frequently, making excuses for Maureen. I say nothing as the months go by without a single appearance from her. I talk to Joyce, though, and she tells me about Tom. My Miss Jamaica knew Tom long before that night at the shebeen, when he approached her about Maureen. Joyce admits that she brought the two of them together and I smile indulgently, pretending not to care any more. She tells me that Maureen sees Tom regularly and parties with him, but insists it’s nothing to do with her any more.

I think Miss Jamaica is lying out of her beautiful black arse.

Dad visits again, trotting out the usual excuse about Maureen not being well. He assures me the boys are fine and I wait until he’s finished spoon-feeding me all his crap.

‘Well?’ I ask.

‘Well what?’

I lean forward, nose almost touching the cold glass: ‘Tell me what the fuck’s going on out there and piss off with all this made-up shit.’

He falters for a moment. Then the truth pours out of him, even though he insists that he doesn’t want to have to be the one to tell me: Maureen’s stopped bothering to come home at all. A few mornings ago he met her in the street with Tom, the two of them draped around each other. When he eventually dragged her home and smashed every plate in the kitchen to make his point, she said nothing except, ‘Please don’t tell Dave.’

Our visit ends and I have to find a way of controlling the pain and anger. I lie on my bunk, thinking it through. The restricted regime of Rule 43 is shredding my marriage and the soul-destroying closed visits have driven us further apart. We need to be together, to be able to hold hands and kiss without having to press our lips against a sheet of unfeeling glass.

I think back to that night at the shebeen. There was no one to blame but me for how I treated her, yet nobody tried to stop me. Maybe we were just white trash to them, after all.

I want so badly to see her properly, to kiss her mouth and tell her: it’s all right, girl, everything will be all right. I make up my mind to come off Rule 43, to get off protection in order to give us time together. I need to have open visits, but to do that . . . I have to join the regular cons.

I explain the situation to Mr Heywood, the landing screw, and he tells me that I won’t last five minutes in Walton without the protection of Rule 43. Inmates coming off the rule are deliberately ‘shipped out’ to other prisons, where they can join the normal cons with their misdemeanours known only to the governor and staff. He does agree, though, that I’d have far more ‘freedom’ as a con, including open visits, television, recreation classes and minimal lock-up, but it’s a different and very dangerous world from the one I’ve grown used to on Rule 43.

He urges me to be sure of my decision and I tell him I’ve got no choice: I
have
to see Maureen properly, not like a caged animal. He manoeuvres me along the landing, out of sight of the sex cases and other screws. ‘Watch your back and walk away,’ he instructs.

I smile; the walking away doesn’t come easily. ‘Thanks, boss,’ I say, and we shake hands.

He switches to formal: ‘Right then, Smith, I’ll put your name down for the governor in the morning.’

‘Stand to the line and give your number and name to the governor,’ the screw shouts. I step forward and two more screws stand in front, eye-balling me.

‘806713 Smith, sir, request to come off Rule 43.’

I’m moved to Lancaster Prison: the castle. Jesus Christ, the walls are even higher than Walton. I walk into reception, carrying my life in a box: letters, photos and the picture frames I’ve made out of spent matchsticks. The two Liverpool escort screws sign me over and I’m officially the property of HM Prison Lancaster.

I notice the Red Bands (trustee cons) hovering about idly. The screw reads through my file and looks up at me, turning the pages slowly. He grunts and places it deliberately on the table before walking away and occupying himself with something else. A Red Band steps forward, opens the file and flicks through the pages. He closes it and coughs; the screw returns. I hear Mr Heywood telling me to watch my back – I’m not even through reception yet and the whole fucking place will know of my arrival within minutes.

The Red Bands lead me to the bathrooms, where I shower fast – many a battering is dished out when you’re stark naked. I’m given my tobacco and a pre-paid reception letter, so that I can write home, and taken to my ground-floor cell. It’s a million years away from my Walton shit hole; it has a clean linoleum floor, pale blue walls, a table area and single bunk, a washing bowl and water jug. Underneath the bunk is a clean piss-pot. I’m impressed.

I put my belongings on the bunk and close the cell door automatically. A minute later a screw barges in and tells me: ‘The doors stay open in this nick till lights out.’ I try to process the thought, as I settle down, arranging my photos and then writing a letter. I feel OK until mealtime arrives. Nervously, I follow the cons into the vast, busy mess hall. I join the queue for grub after collecting my tray and cup. The con ladling out the food asks me if I want more than the amount he’s already slapped onto my plate. I stare down at it, shocked that no one moves to spit in it when the screws aren’t looking. The other surprise is the quality of the food; I collect as much bread as I can eat – real bread, not the stodgy crap we got in Walton – and search for somewhere to sit.

Panic suddenly grips me. I’m not used to being with so many people and can’t handle it. I need my cell with its door shut; I
want
to be locked up. I leave the hall with my tray and walk quickly back to my cell, closing the door behind me. I stand with the tray in my hands, sweating and shivering at once.

The door opens. ‘You eat with the rest of them,’ the screw tells me. ‘There’s no segregation in here. Only down in the block.’

‘I want to eat on my own.’

The screw jerks his head. ‘Out with you.’

I go back to the mess with my tray, tip the food into the bin and return to my cell again. During the night, I listen, door open, to the cons laughing at the comedy programme on telly. They play pool, darts, chess, dominoes, cards . . . I lie on my bunk, thinking. I’ve sent out my visiting order and hope I’ll soon see Maureen. But I already miss the restricted regime of Walton and being alone for much of the day. In Walton, I could lose myself in memories, drifting back to a place of cobbled streets and short pants, old ladies and Sunday dinners, bath nights and lovely warm beds, and best of all . . . another adventure with Tom Sawyer.

The days drift by. I eat with the cons but sit without speaking while people chatter to the left and right of me. I’m given a decent job in the metalwork shop, where I can earn a bit extra to buy tobacco and toiletries, but after only a few hours I stand up and approach the boss.

‘Take me back, please.’

He looks at me blankly.

‘Boss, please, I need to go back to my fucking cell.’

He hits the button and I’m taken back into the main prison, to my own little room. I spend as much time as I can there in the next few days, sitting quietly with an unopened book or else gazing at the walls. My head feels thick and dull; twice a day I walk the line but a different sort of fear is beginning to take hold of me. I want to see Maureen and make everything ‘right’ for us, but my grasp on reality is weakening. I keep closing my cell door and the screws bang it open without speaking to me. I stare at them, wondering why the door can’t stay shut until I’ve worked out if I’m ill in the head now, or if I was ill before I got here and am getting better, or if I’m becoming ill. Nothing makes sense, and what’s going on in my head least of all.

I sit in the library, alone, thinking, endlessly fucking thinking. I’m so tired, I’m so very, very tired. Mother of God, please lift me out of this mess, take me away, I want to sleep and I want the hurting to stop, I feel like ripping myself apart. The real world hurts too much and I don’t want to be part of it. I want to be seven years old again, pretending to be Jesse James as I dodge the traffic on Stockport Road, heading home from the Apollo after a cowboy film and an orange lolly. Help me do the right thing before I close my eyes. Make it real.

When the morning post arrives, my name and number is listed at last on the mail board. My spirits soar; I’m delighted for myself, collecting the barest of breakfasts – a mug of tea and some toast – because I don’t want to waste time in the queue.

I seek out the screw, feeling high: ‘Morning, boss, mail for 806713 Smith.’ I think quickly to myself:
please, God, don’t let it be from Dad, don’t let it be from my fucking dad, not this time, please not this time
. I’m handed the letter in its opened envelope – pre-read in the censor’s office – and recognise the handwriting.
Yes, yes, fucking yes
.
It’s from Maureen.

I find a table and bench, sip my tea and make two roll-ups. I sniff the envelope; yes, that’s her scent on the paper. I pull out the pages and read.

There are six or seven sheets, folded neatly together. I read one and place it down, resting the second carefully on the first and so on until I reach the end: ‘
I’ll miss you forever, love, Maureen. xxxxx.
’

I count the five kisses.

This isn’t right, it’s all gone wrong – I didn’t plan it like this. I light the second roll-up, my insides pitch and heave, my hands have gone; the trembling moves up my arms and into my shoulders. I read the letter a second time, more slowly, taking in every word, reading certain lines over and over and over again: she’s received my visiting order but won’t be using it . . . she complains about Dad . . . there are too many arguments . . . the boys are OK . . . the new house in Moss Side is all right, she likes it . . . she’s been going out a lot with Joyce . . . Then the killer hook:
We need a break, I have something to tell you, remember Tom
, yes, I remember Tom,
please don’t write again, I’ll burn your letters, no more visiting orders, I’ll miss you forever, love, Maureen. xxxxx
.