Heaven: A Prison Diary (21 page)

Christmas Day
for those who are incarcerated can be summed up in one word: dreadful. I have
learned during the last 159 days as a prisoner how perverse reality is.

I go to work
today, as every other day, and am grateful for something to do. At the
seven-thirty surgery, only six prisoners report for sick parade; you have to be
really ill to get up at 7.30 am on Christmas morning and troop across to the
hospital when the temperature on the east coast is minus two degrees.

At
eight-fifteen I go to breakfast, and even though it’s eggs, bacon and sausage
served by the officers (Mr Hocking, Mr Camplin, Mr Baker and Mr Gough), only
around forty of the two hundred inmates bother to turn up.

On returning to
the hospital, Linda and I unload bags of food from her car so I can hold a tea
party for my friends this afternoon. She also gives me a present, which is
wrapped in Christmas paper. I open it very slowly, trying to anticipate what it
might be.

Inside a neat
little box is a china mug, with a black cat grinning at me. Now I have my own
mug, and will no longer have to decide between a Campbell’s Soup giveaway and a
plain white object with a chip when I have my morning Bovril.

Linda leaves me
in charge of the hospital while she attends the governor’s Christmas party.
Frankly, if over half the prisoners weren’t still in bed asleep, I could
arrange for them all to abscond. When the tabloids claim I have privileges that
the other prisoners do not have, in one respect they are right; I am lucky to
be able to carry on with the job I do on the outside. While everyone else tries
to kill time, I settle down to write for a couple of hours.

Lunch is
excellent, and once again served by the officers, and shared with a half dozen
old-age pensioners from the local village; tomato soup, followed by turkey,
chipolatas, roast potatoes and stuffing, with as much gravy as will go on the
plate. I don’t allow myself the Christmas pudding – several officers have
kindly commented on the fact that I’m putting on weight (nine pounds in nine
weeks).

After lunch I
walk over to the south block and phone Mary and the boys. All things considered
they sound pretty cheerful, but I can’t hide the fact that I miss them. My wife
is fifty-seven, my boys twenty-nine and twenty-seven, and today I’m surrounded
by men sitting in their rooms staring at photographs of young children anywhere
from six months to fifteen years old. Yes, they deserve to be incarcerated if
they committed a crime, but we should remember it is Christmas Day, and it’s
not their families who are guilty.

As I walk back
through the block, I notice that those not in the TV room or on the phone are
just lying on their beds willing the day to pass. I have so much food in my
fridge that I invite a dozen inmates over to join me in the hospital.

They all turn
up, without exception. We watch
The Great
Escape (somewhat ironic) and enjoy Linda’s feast – pork pies, crisps,
sausage rolls, shortbread biscuits, KitKats and, most popular of all with my
fellow inmates, a chunk of my Cheddar cheese. This is accompanied not by Krug,
but a choice of lemonade, Evian water, tea, coffee or Ribena.

They laugh,
they chat, they watch the film, and when they leave, David (fraud,
schoolmaster) pays me a compliment I have never received at any of my champagne
and shepherd’s pie parties. ‘Thank you for getting rid of the afternoon so
pleasantly.’

For those
prisoners who do not return to work, Boxing Day is almost worse than Christmas
Day. Very few inmates attend surgery this morning, and certainly none of them
have any illness worth reporting.

Over breakfast,
I learn another terrible consequence of the drug culture in prisons. Jim
(antiques only), the gym orderly, tells me that some inmates who are addicted
to heroin often die within a few months of leaving prison.
The
reason?
The heroin they take in jail is always weaker because the
dealers add other substances such as caster sugar, talc or flour. So when they
are released, they are immediately exposed to a purer substance, which the body
can no longer tolerate. Result? They end up dying of an overdose.

The governor
drops in to see Linda, and gives me a Christmas present and a birthday present
for Mary, neither of which he’s allowed to do, as it could compromise him
should I ever come up in front of him on report. However, as it’s only a few
days before he retires, I suppose he feels this is unlikely.

It turns out
that the governor is a collector of farthings, and he gives Mary a farthing
dated 1944 and I receive one dated 1940 – our respective years of birth. I am
touched.

He also brings
in three volumes of
The World’s Greatest
Paintings:

Selected
Masterpieces,
published in 1934 and edited by T. Leman Hare, for me to read over
Christmas. He understands what turns me on.

The three
volumes are fascinating at several levels, not least because of the one hundred
pictures,
almost all of them would be in an equivalent
compilation circa 2002. The paintings include da Vinci’s
Mona
Lisa,
Bellini’s
Portrait of the Doge Lorendano,
Rembrandt’s
Mother, Landseer’s Shoeing the Bay Mare
(wonderful) and Yeames’

When Did You Last See Your Father
?

However, in
this 1934 volume, there is no mention of the Impressionists; no examples of
Monet, Manet, Van Gogh or even Cézanne. Velasquez is described as the greatest
Spanish painter of all time, with Murillo in second place. I wonder if
Professor Hare had even heard of Picasso in 1934, and where he would place him
in the lexicon of Spanish artists in 2002.

There are only
two artists I have never come across before: John MacWhiter and Millet – not
Jean-Francois Millet, but an American, Francis David Millet. ‘On the out’

I visit Tate
Britain regularly–I live opposite, on the other side of the river – but I don’t
remember seeing either MacWhiter’s
June
in the Austrian Tyrol
(magnificent), or Millet’s
Between Two Fires
. I hope Sir Nicholas Serota has them on display,
because Tate Britain will be among the first places I visit once I’m released.

In his
foreword, Professor Hare writes something that, in my opinion, is even more
relevant today than it was in 1934:

There is so
much nonsense spoken and written about art today that the average man is,
naturally, inclined to be shy of the whole subject, and suspicious of those who
practise the Arts. He thinks
,
if this mass of
contradiction and confusing jargon is the result of the love of Art, he had
better do without Art altogether. There is no mystery about Art, but there is
mystification without end, evolved by certain critics who love to pose as
superior persons. Such writers put forward the theory that the enjoyment of
fine arts is reserved for a select and exclusive minority, meaning of course,
themselves and their disciples. No greater error could be propounded than this,
which is a comparatively modern fallacy and one which is so dangerous that if
persisted, it must in time bring into contempt everything and everyone
connected with Art.

1934. 2002. No
comment.

Linda shuts up
shop for the day and goes home for a well-earned rest. She has been on duty for
the past nineteen days without a break.

I confess that,
by prison standards, I am in heaven. But I feel I ought to let you know I’m
still desperate to get back to earth.

Governor Lewis
has received a call from Sir Brian Mawhinney, and although he can’t divulge any
details, he suspects the Shadow Home Secretary will be in touch with Mary who
in turn will brief me.
Mystery.

The governor
sips his tea. ‘As I’m leaving shortly, I’m going to tell you a story about a
present member of staff who must remain anonymous. The officer concerned had a
day off, and in the evening he and his wife went to their local for a drink.
When they left the pub later, the officer saw a man trying to get his car
started, but it sounded as if the battery was flat. The officer asked if he
could help by giving a push. The driver said thank you and the officer pushed
him out of the car park. The ignition caught, and the driver gave a toot of
thanks as he disappeared over the horizon.

When the
officer concerned returned to work the following morning, he learned that one
of the inmates had absconded. The prisoner had even managed to steal a car from
a local pub with the help of an obliging member of the public, who had given
him a push start.’

‘It can’t be
true,’ I protest. ‘Surely he recognized the prisoner?’ (To be fair, there are
over two hundred inmates at NSC and the turnover is often twenty to thirty a
week.)

‘You’d think
so,’ replied the governor, ‘especially as the inmate was the only West Indian
on the
camp.’15
He laughs. The officer concerned might have even lived
it down if it weren’t for the fact that neither the prisoner nor the stolen car
has been seen since.’

Whenever
there’s a serious injury in prison, the immediate question always asked is,
‘Was another prisoner involved?’ So when Linda and I are called over to the
north block to check on an inmate who is thought to have broken his leg after
slipping on the floor, Linda’s first question is, ‘Who pushed him?’

By the time we
arrive the duty officers, Mr Hughes and Mr Jones, are present, and they are
satisfied Ron has had a genuine accident.

However, there
are several touches of irony in this particular case. The inmate involved is
serving a six-week sentence, and is due to be released next Thursday. Last year
he broke his left leg in a motorbike accident.

This time he
has managed to break his right leg, and several of the pins in his left have
been dislodged. Linda confirms that an officer must accompany him to hospital;
although how he’d abscond with two broken legs is beyond me – and why would he
want to try, six days before he’s due to be released?

However,
regulations are regulations.

Normally you
can’t be released from prison unless you have been given a clean bill of health
by the duty doctor, and in Ron’s case it will be at least six weeks before the
plaster comes off.

‘We’ll let him
go,’ Linda says, ‘but only if a family member picks him up next Thursday and
also agrees to take responsibility for him.’

‘And if no one
does?’ I ask.

‘Then he’ll
stay here until he’s fully recovered.’

Mary, William
and James visit me. We talk mainly of the legal issues surrounding my trial and
appeal. The topic of conversation then turns to Baroness Nicholson. Mary has
written to her asking for an apology.

Mary is off to
Kenya with her sister Janet on Monday, a journey she has wanted to make for
some years because of her love of cats, whatever their size.

What happened
to our ninety minutes together?

I’m in my final
writing session for the day when there’s a knock on the door. This usually
means that a prisoner has a headache and needs some paracetamol, which I am
allowed to dispense as long as the inmate has a note from the duty officer. If
it’s something more serious, then his unit officer has to be consulted. I open
my door and smile up at an inmate, who looks pretty healthy to me.

‘Have you got
any condoms, Jeff?’ he asks.

‘No,’ I tell
him, aware that Linda keeps a supply for prisoners going on weekend leave, or
just about to be released, but even then she only gives them out very
sparingly. ‘If you report to surgery
at seven-thirty tomorrow
morning,
Linda will...’

‘It’ll be too
late by then,’ he says. I look surprised. ‘It’s just that my sister visited me
this afternoon and she hasn’t got enough money to get home. A few of the lads
are willing to pay her ten quid for a blow job, which usually ends up with them
going the whole way and ending up paying twenty.’

All of which
begs several questions when possession of money in a prison is illegal. Is this
an indoor or outdoor activity (it’s minus two degrees outside) and is she
really his sister?

‘Sorry, I can’t
help,’ is my only response, and after he has disappeared into the night. I try
hard to concentrate on my writing.

The security
officer on duty today enjoys his job, but never feels fulfilled until he’s put
someone on a charge. Mr Vessey rushes into surgery to see sister. During the
night he’s found fourteen empty bottles of vodka at the bottom of the skip by
the entrance to the prison. A whispered conversation ensues, not that it takes
a lot of imagination to realize that he’s asking if any inmates checked into
surgery this morning ‘a little worse for wear’. Moments later, he rushes off to
the south block.

In fact, very
few inmates were on sick parade this morning as most of them are sleeping in,
or sleeping it off, and the ones that appeared were genuinely ill. He will be
disappointed.

During the morning
we have visits from Mr Lewis and Mr Berlyn, the new deputy governor, who join
Linda for coffee. Mr Hocking is the next to arrive, with the news that five
inmates have failed the breathalyser test.

Two of them are
CSV workers, who could lose all their privileges. For example, they could be
put back to work on the farm for the rest of their
sentence.16
Mr
Hocking tells me he doubts if the punishment will be that draconian, but the
warning will be clear for the future.