Heaven: A Prison Diary (18 page)

Once again Mr
Donnelly searched for her, and once again he failed to find her. The inmates
knew that it couldn’t be long before Blossom’s hiding place was discovered, so
they put in an application to the governor to buy her, so that she could spend
the rest of her days at NSC in peace. Mr Donnelly was so moved by the
prisoners’ concern that he lifted the death penalty and allowed Blossom to
retire. The happy pet now roams around the farm, behaving literally like a pig
in clover. (See below.)

Blossom and his
friend Blossom

On my way back
to the hospital after breakfast, I sense something different, and realize that
Peter (lifer, arson) is not on the road sweeping the leaves as he does every
morning. A security officer explains that Peter is out on a town leave in
Boston; the first occasion he’s left prison in thirty-one years. I’ll try to
have a word with him as soon as he returns, so that I can capture his first
impressions of freedom.

The new
inductees report to the doctor for their medical check-up. I now feel I’m
settling into a routine as hospital orderly.

Call Mary to
assure her that the courts have now located my papers, and to wish her luck
with our Christmas party tomorrow night.

She will also
be attending Denis and Margaret Thatcher’s fiftieth wedding anniversary at the
East India Club earlier in the evening.

She promises to
call me and let me know how they both went. No, I remind her, I can only call
you.

An announcement
over the tannoy instructs me to report to reception. I arrive to be told by
Sergeant Major Daff that I have been sent two Christmas cakes – one from Mrs
Gerald Scarfe, better known as Jane Asher, with a card, from which I reproduce
only the final sentence:

I’m baking you
a cake for Christmas with a hacksaw and file inside.

See you soon,
love Jane – and one from a ladies’ group in Middleton.

As no prisoner
is allowed to receive any foodstuffs in case they contain alcohol or drugs, Mr
Daff agrees that one can go to the local retirement home, and the other to the
special needs children. So it’s all right for the children to be stoned out of
their minds and the old-age pensioners to be drugged up to the eyeballs, but
not me.

‘It’s Home
Office regulations,’ explains Mr Daff.

I spot Peter
(lifer, arson) coming up the drive. He looks in a bit of a daze, so I invite
him to join me in the hospital for coffee and biscuits. We chat for nearly an
hour.

The biggest
shock for Peter on leaving prison for the first time in over thirty years was
the number of ‘coffin dodgers’ (old people) that were on the streets of Boston
doing their Christmas shopping. In 1969, the life expectancy for a man was
sixty-eight years and for a woman seventy-three; it’s now seventy-six and
eighty-one respectively.

Peter also
considered many of the young women dressed ‘very tarty’, but he did admit that
he couldn’t stop staring at them. Peter, who is six foot four inches tall and
weighs eighteen stone, was surprised that he no longer stands out in a crowd,
as he would have done thirty-one years ago. When he visited Safeways
supermarket, it was the first time he’d seen a trolley; in the past he had only
been served at a counter and used a shopping basket. And as for money, he knows
of course about decimalization, but when he last purchased something from a
shop there were 240 pennies in a pound, half-crowns, ten shilling notes and the
guinea was still of blessed memory.

Peter was
totally baffled by pelican crossings and was frightened to walk across one.

However the
experience he most disliked was having to use a changing room to try on clothes
behind a curtain, while members of the public walked past him – particularly female
assistants who didn’t mind drawing back the curtain to see how he was getting
on. He was amazed that he could try on a shirt and then not have to purchase
it.

I suspect that
the process of rehabilitation – accompanied town visits (six in all), unaccompanied
town visits, weekend home visits,
week
visits, CSV
work, followed by a job in the community – will take him at least another three
to four years, by which time Peter will qualify for his old-age pension. I can
only wonder if he will ever rejoin the real world and not simply be moved from
one institution to another.

I listen to the
ten o’clock news. Roy Whiting has been given life imprisonment for the murder
of Sarah Payne. Once the sentence has been passed, we discover that Whiting had
already been convicted some years ago for abducting a child, and sexually
abusing a minor.
His sentence on that occasion?
Four
years.

Orderlies are
the prison’s school prefects.

They’re given
their jobs because they can be trusted. In return, they’re expected to work for
these privileges, such as eating together in a small group, and in my case
having a single room with a television.

There are over
a dozen orderlies in all.

Yesterday both
reception orderlies were sacked, leaving two much sought-after vacancies.

Martin, the
senior of the two reception orderlies, was due to be discharged this morning,
two months early, on tag (HCD). The only restriction was that he must remain in
his place of residence between the hours of 7 pm and 7 am. Martin had already
completed the ‘paper chase’, which had to be carried out the day before
release. Unfortunately, before departing this morning he decided to take with
him a brand-new prison-issue denim top and jeans, and several shirts. A blue
and white striped prison shirt apparently sells at around a hundred pounds on
the outside, especially if it has the letters NSC on the pocket.

When the theft
was discovered, he was immediately sacked and, more sadly, so was the other
orderly, Barry, whose only crime was that he wouldn’t grass on Martin. It’s
rough justice when the only way to keep your job is to grass on your mate when
you know what the consequences will be for that person – not to mention how the
other inmates will treat you in the future. We will find out the punishment
tomorrow when both men will be up in front of the governor.

I am
disappointed to receive a letter from William Payne, the governor of Spring
Hill, turning down my application for transfer.

His reasons for
rejecting me are shown in his letter reproduced here. (See opposite.) I feel I
should point out that the last five inmates from NSC who have applied to Spring
Hill have all been accepted. It’s not worth appealing, because I’ve long given
up expecting any justice whenever the Home Office is involved.

Six new
inductees: four on short sentences ranging from three weeks to nine months, and
two lifers who, for the past sixteen years, have been banged up for twenty-two
hours a day. They are walking around the perimeters of the prison (no walls) in
a daze, and can’t understand why they’re not being ordered back to their cells.
Linda tells me that lifers often report at the end of the first week with
foot-sores and colds, and take far longer to adapt to open conditions.

One of the
short-termers from Nottingham who’s been placed in the no-smoking spur on the
south block that has mostly more
mature
CSV workers
who only return to the prison at night – tells me with a wry smile that he
couldn’t sleep last night because it was so quiet.

A visit from Mr Hocking.
I’m no longer to dispose of
personal papers, letters, envelopes or notes in the dustbin outside the
hospital, as a prisoner was caught rifling through the contents last night. In
future I must hand them to a security officer, who will shred them. NSC does
not want to repeat the Belmarsh debacle, where an officer stole a chapter of my
book and tried to sell it to the
Sun
.

I sit in my
palace and hold court with Doug, Clive and Carl, or at least that’s how it
feels after Belmarsh and Wayland.

In London, Mary
is hosting our Christmas party.

Today is
judgment day. Three prisoners are up in front of the governor. Inmates take a
morbid interest in the outcome of any adjudication as it’s a yardstick for
discovering what they can hope to get away with.

Martin, the
reception orderly who pleaded guilty to attempting to steal prison clothes on
the day he was due to be released, has his tagging privileges removed, and
seven days added to his sentence. So for the sake of a pair of jeans and a few
prison shirts, Martin will remain at NSC until a couple of weeks before Easter,
rather than spending Christmas at home with his wife and family. Added to this,
the sixty-seven days will not be spent in the warmth of reception as an
orderly, but on the farm in the deep mid-winter cleaning out the pig pens.

Barry is next
up. His crime was not grassing on Martin. Although Martin stated clearly at the
adjudication that Barry was not party to the offence, he also loses his orderly
job, and returns to the farm as a shepherd.

For the
governor to expect him to ‘grass’ on his friend (I even doubt if they were
friends) seems to me a little rough.

Finding
competent replacements will not be easy. The rumour is that Peter (lifer, just
had his first day out after thirty-one years) has been offered the job as the
next step in his rehabilitation. Peter tells me that he doesn’t want to be an
orderly, and is happy to continue sweeping up leaves.

The third
prisoner in front of the governor this morning is Ali, a man serving three
months for theft. Ali has refused to work on the farm and locked himself in his
room. For this act of defiance, he has four days added to his sentence. This
may not sound excessive, and in normal circumstances I don’t think he could
complain, as it’s the statutory sentence for refusing to work. However, the
four days are Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and 27 December.

Ali arrives in
the hospital moments after the adjudication and bursts into tears. The governor
decides that I should be punished as well, because Linda puts me in charge of
him. It’s ten-forty and the governor wants Ali back on the farm by this
afternoon. Fortunately, England
are
playing India.
It’s the second day of the Test, and Ali knows his cricket. We settle down in
the hospital ward to watch the final session of the day. Sachin Tendulkar is at
the crease so Ali stops crying.

By lunchtime
(end of play in Madras), Tendulkar has scored 123 and Ali’s tears have turned
to smiles.

He’s back on
the farm at one o’clock.

Seven new
prisoners in from Nottingham
today,
and as we only
released three this morning, our numbers reach 211; our capacity is 220. The
weekly turnover at NSC is about 20 per cent, and I’m told it always peaks at
this time of year. I’m also informed by one of the lifers that there are more
absconders over Christmas, many of whom give
themselves
up on Boxing Day evening. The governor’s attitude is simple; if they return to
the gate and apologize, they have twentyeight days added to their sentence; if
they wait until they’re picked up by the police,
then
in addition to the added twenty-eight days, they’re shipped out to a B-cat the
following morning.

Linda asks me
to take two blood samples down to the gate, so they can be sent to Pilgrim
Hospital. On the three-hundred-yard walk, I become distracted by a new idea for
how the twins discover their identity in
Sons
of Fortune
. When I arrive at the gate, the blood samples are no longer in
the plastic packet, and must have fallen out en route. I run for the first time
in weeks. I don’t want to lose my job, and end up working on the farm. I see
Jim (gym orderly) running towards me – he’s found the samples on the side of
the path. I thank him between puffs – he’s saved me from my first reportable
offence. Actually, I think I should confess at this stage that some weeks ago I
picked up a penny from the path and have kept the tiny coin in my jeans pocket,
feeling a slight defiance in possessing cash. I put the samples back in their
plastic packet and hand them in at the gate.