Hell: A Prison Diary Part 6

'No,' I reply, 'but they did promise I wouldn't have to share a cell with you.'

This feeble effort is greeted by clapping and cheers, which I later learn was because I'd stood up to a man who had blown his brother's head off. I'm glad I was told this later because, let me a.s.sure you, if I'd known at the time I would have kept my mouth shut.

The door is opened again, and this time Mr Aveling tells me that the senior officer on the block wants to see me. This is greeted by more jeers and applause. 'Be careful, Jeff, he thinks you're after his job.'

I'm led to an even more comfortable room, with chairs, a desk and even pictures on the walls, to be greeted by four officers, three men and one woman. Mr Marsland, the most senior officer present, two pips on his epaulettes,* confirms the rumour that as I won't be staying long he has put me on the lifers' spur. I was obviously unable to mask my horror at the very idea, because he quickly rea.s.sures me.

'You'll find it's the most settled wing in the prison, as most of the inmates have sentences ranging between twelve and twentyfive years, and all they want is an easy life.

Otherwise they'll never be considered for transfer to a B- or C-cat, let alone parole.' Yet again, exactly the opposite of what one might imagine. 'And we also have a request,' says Mr Marsland looking down at a sheet of paper. 'Mrs Williamson is running a creativewriting course, and wonders if you would be willing to address her cla.s.s?'

'Of course I will,' I said. 'How many normally attend?'

'Because it's you, we think they'll be record numbers,' says Mrs Williamson, 'so it could be as many as twelve.' I haven't addressed an audience of twelve since I was the GLC candidate for Romford thirty years ago.

'One problem has arisen,' continues Mr Marsland, 'I'm afraid there are no single cells available on the lifers' spur at the moment, so you'll have to share.' My heart sinks. Will I end up with a murderer, a rapist or a drug addict, or a combination of all three? 'But we'll try to find you a sensible cell-mate,' he concludes before standing to signal that the interview is over.

I return to the waiting room and only have to hang around for a few more minutes before we are taken off to our new cells. Once again I've been put on the top floor I think this must be for security reasons. Cell 40 is a little larger than Cell 29, where I last resided, but far from double the size, remembering that it has to accommodate two prisoners. It measures seven paces by four, rather than five by three, and up against the far wall, directly in front of the lavatory, is a small bunk bed, which one would more normally a.s.sociate with a nursery.

My room-mate turns out to be Terry. Terry the writer. He is the one who approached me in the yard and asked if I would read his ma.n.u.script. He's been selected to join me because he doesn't smoke, a rarity amongst inmates, and it's a prison regulation that if you don't smoke, they can't make you share a cell with someone who does. The authorities a.s.sumed I would be aware of this rule. I wasn't.

Terry, as I have already mentioned, is halfway through writing a novel and seems pleased to discover who his cell-mate will be.

I find out later why, and it's not because he wants me to help him with his syntax.

Terry is outwardly courteous and friendly, and despite my continually asking him to call me Jeffrey, he goes on addressing me as Mr Archer. We agree that he will have the top bunk and I the bottom, on account of my advanced years. I quickly discover that he's very tidy, happy to make both beds, sweep the floor and regularly empty our little plastic bucket.

I begin to unpack my cellophane bag and store my possessions in the tiny cupboard above my bed. Once we've both finished unpacking, I explain to Terry that I write for six hours a day, and hope he will understand if I don't speak to him during those set two-hour periods. He seems delighted with this arrangement, explaining that he wants to get on with his own novel. I'm about to ask how it's progressing, when the door is opened and we're joined by a prison officer who has intercepted my freshly ironed white s.h.i.+rt. The officer begins by apologizing, before explaining that he will have to confiscate my white s.h.i.+rt, because if I were to wear it, I might be mistaken for a member of the prison staff.

This is the white s.h.i.+rt that I'd had washed and ironed by Peter the press so that I could look smart for Will and James's visit. I'm now down to one blue s.h.i.+rt, and one T-s.h.i.+rt (borrowed). He places my white s.h.i.+rt in yet another plastic bag for which I have to sign yet another form. He a.s.sures me that it will be returned as soon as I have completed my sentence.

12 noon After a second session of writing, the cell door is opened and we are let out for a.s.sociation. I join the lifers on the ground floor, which has an identical layout to House Block Three. The lifers (23 murderers plus a handful of ABH and GBH* to make up the numbers) range in age from nineteen to fifty, and view me with considerable suspicion. Not only because I'm a Conservative millionaire, but far worse, I will only be with them for a few days before I'm dispatched to an open prison. Something they won't experience for at least another ten years. It will take a far greater effort to break down the barriers with this particular group than the young fledgeling criminals of House Block Three.

As I stroll around, I stop to glance at the TV. A man of about my age is watching Errol Flynn and David Niven in the black-andwhite version of The Charge of the Light Brigade. I take a seat next to him.

'I'm David,' he says. 'You haven't shaved today.'

I confess my sin, and explain that I was in the process of doing so when an officer told me I would be moving.

'Understood,' said David. 'But I have to tell you, Jeffrey, you're too old for designer stubble. All the lifers shave,' he tells me.

'You've got to cling on to whatever dignity you can in a h.e.l.lhole like this,' he adds, 'and a warm shower and a good shave are probably the best way to start the day.' David goes on chatting during the film as if it was nothing more than background muzak. He apologizes for not having read any of my novels, a.s.suring me that his wife has enjoyed all of them, but he only finds time to read whenever he's in jail. I resist asking the obvious question.

'What are you reading at the moment?' I enquire.

'Ackroyd's Life of d.i.c.kens,' he replies.

And, as if he senses my incredulity, adds, 'Mr Micawber, what a character, bit like my father to be honest, always in debt. Now remind me, what was his Christian name?'

'Wilkins,' I reply.

'Just testing, Jeffrey, just testing. Actually I tried to get one of your books out of the library the other day, but they've removed them all from the shelves. A diabolical liberty, that's what I'd call it. I told them I wanted to read it, not steal the b.l.o.o.d.y thing.' I begin to notice how few prisoners use bad language in front of me. One of the other inmates, who has been watching the TV, leans across and asks me if the story's true. I can just about recall Tennyson's poem of the gallant six hundred, and I'm fairly certain Errol Flynn didn't ride through the enemy lines, and thrust a sword into the heart of their leader.

'Of course he did,' says David, 'it was in his contract.'

On this occasion we do get to see the closing t.i.tles, because the duty officer has checked what time the film finishes. He prefers not to have thirty or forty disenchanted lifers on his hands.

At five we're invited to return to our cells for lock-up. This invitation takes the form of an officer bellowing at the top of his voice.

On arrival, I find another 200 letters waiting for me on the bottom bunk. All of them have been opened, as per prison regulations, to check they do not contain any drugs, razor blades or money. Reading every one of them kills another couple of hours while you're 'banged up'. I'm beginning to think in prison jargon.

The public seems genuinely concerned about my plight. Many of them comment on the judge's summing-up and the harshness of the sentence, while others point out that bank robbers, paedophiles and even those charged with manslaughter often get off with a two- or three-year sentence. The recurring theme is 'What does Mr Justice Potts have against you?' I confess I don't know the answer to that question, but what cannot be denied is that I asked my barrister, Nick Purnell, on the third, fourth and seventh days of the trial to speak to the judge privately in chambers about his obvious prejudice, and request a retrial. However, my silk advised against this approach, on the grounds that it would only turn the whole trial into an allout battle between the two of us. Lest you might think I am making this all up conveniently after the event, I also confided my fears to the Honourable Michael Beloff QC, Gilbert Gray QC and Johnnie Nutting QC during the trial.

It wasn't until the second hour that I came across a letter demanding that I should apologize to all those I had let down. The next letter in the pile is from Mary. I read it again and again. She begins by remarking that she couldn't remember when she had last written to me. She reminds me that she is off to Strathclyde University this morning to chair the summer school on solar energy, accompanied by the world's press and my son Will.

Thank G.o.d for Will. He's been a tower of strength. At the end of the week, she flies to Dresden to attend another conference, and is hoping to be back in time to visit me at Belmarsh on Sunday morning. I miss her and the children, of course I do, but above anything I hope it won't be too long before the press become bored with me and allow Mary to carry on with her life.

When I come to the end of the letters, Terry helps me put them into four large brown envelopes so they can be sent on to Alison, my PA, in order that everyone who has taken the trouble to write receives a reply. While Terry is helping me, he begins to tell me his life story and how he ended up being in jail. He's not a lifer, which is perhaps another reason they asked him if he was willing to share a cell with me.

Terry has been in prison twice, graduating via Borstal and a remand centre. He began sniffing solvents as a child, before moving on to cannabis by the age of twelve. His first offence was robbing a local newsagent because he needed money for his drug habit. He was sentenced to two years and served one. His second charge was for robbing a jeweller's in Margate of 3,000 worth of goods for which he hoped to make around 800 from a London fence. The police caught him red-handed (his words), and he was sentenced to five years. He was twenty-two at the time, and served three and a half years of that sentence before being released.

Terry had only been out for seven months when he robbed an optician's designer goods, Cartier, Calvin Klein and Christian Dior, stolen to order. This time he was paid 900 in cash, but arrested a week later. The fingerprints on the shop window he put his fist through matched his, leaving the police with only one suspect. The judge sentenced him to another five years.

Terry hopes to be released in December of this year. Prison, he claims, has weaned him off drugs and he's only thankful that he's never tried heroin. Terry is n.o.body's fool, and I only hope that when he gets out he will not return for a third time. He swears he won't, but a prison officer tells me that twothirds of repeat offenders are back inside within twelve months.

'We have our regulars just like any Blackpool hotel, except we don't charge for bed and breakfast.'

Terry is telling me about his mother, when suddenly there is a wild commotion of screaming and shouting that reverberates throughout the entire block. It's the first time I'm glad that my cell door is locked. The prisoners in Block One are yelling at a man who is being escorted to the medical centre on the far side of the yard. I remember it well.

'What's all that about?' I ask as I stare out of our cell window.

'He's a nonce,' Terry explains.

'Nonce?'

'Prison slang for a nonsense merchant, a paedophile. If he'd been on this block we would have jugged him long ago.'

'Jugged him?'

'A jug of boiling hot water,' Terry explains, 'mixed with a bag of sugar to form a syrup.

Two cons would hold him down while the liquid is poured slowly over his face.'

'My G.o.d, that must be horrific.'

'First the skin peels off your face and then the sugar dissolves, so you end up disfigured for the rest of your life no more than he deserves,' Terry adds.

'Have you ever witnessed that?' I ask.

'Three times,' he replies matter-of-factly.

'One nonce, one drug dealer, and once over an argument about someone who hadn't returned a two-pound phonecard.' He pauses before adding, 'If they were to put him on this block, he'd be dead within twenty-four hours.'

I'm terrified, so I can only wonder what sort of fear they live in. The moment the prisoner disappears into the medical centre, the shouting and yelling stops.

4.00 pm The cell door is at last unlocked and we are allowed out into the exercise yard. On my first circuit, about two hundred yards, I'm joined by a young prisoner come to think of it, everyone is young except for me and David. His name is Nick, and if it weren't for his crooked front teeth and broken nose, he would be a good-looking man. He's been in prison for the past fourteen years, and he's only thirty-three, but he hopes to be out in four years' time as long as he can beat his latest rap.

'Your latest rap?' I repeat.

'Yeah, they've been trying to pin arson on me after what I got up to in Durham, but they've got no proof that I set fire to my cell, so they'll have to drop the charge.' He's joined by another lifer who has just completed four of his eighteen years.

There seems to be a completely different att.i.tude among the lifers. They often say, 'Don't bother to count the first six years.'

They acknowledge they won't be out next week, next month, or even next year, and have settled for a long spell of prison life.

Most of them treat me with respect and don't indulge in clever or snide remarks.

On the next circuit I'm joined by Mike (armed robbery), who tells me that he listened to Ted Francis and Max Clifford on the radio last night, and adds that the boys just can't wait for one of them to be sent to prison. 'We don't like people who st.i.tch up their mates especially for money.' I stick a.s.siduously to Nick Purnell's advice and make no comment.

When I return to the cell, Terry is about to go down for supper. I tell him I just can't face it, but he begs me to join him because tonight it's pineapple upside-down pudding, and that's his favourite. I join him and go through the ritual of selecting a couple of burnt mushrooms in order to lay my hands on an extra upside-down pudding.

By the time I get back to the cell, Terry is sweeping the room and cleaning the washbasin. I've been lucky to be shacked up with someone who is so tidy, and hates anything to be out of place. Terry sits on the bed munching his meal, while I read through what I've penned that day. Once Terry's finished, he washes his plate, knife, fork and spoon before stacking them neatly on the floor in the corner. I continue reading my script while he picks up a Bible. He turns to the Book of Hebrews, which I confess I have never read, and studies quietly for the next hour.

Once I've completed my work for the day, I return to reading The Moon's a Balloon, which I put down just after ten when war has been declared. The pillows are a little softer than those on Block Three, for which I am grateful.

Day 7 - Wednesday 25 July 2001.

5.17 am.

'f.u.c.k off,' cries a voice so loud it wakes me.

It's a few moments before I realize that it's Terry shouting in his sleep. He mumbles something else which I can't quite decipher, before he wakes with a start. He climbs out of bed, almost as if he's unaware there's someone in the bunk below him. I don't stir, but open my eyes and watch carefully. I'm not frightened; although Terry has a past record of violence, I've never seen any sign of it. In fact, despite the use of bad language in his novel, he never swears in front of me at least not when he's awake.

Terry walks slowly over to the wall and places his head in the corner like a cat who thinks he's about to die. He doesn't move for some time, then turns, picks up a towel by the basin, sits down on the plastic chair and buries his head in the towel. Desperate and depressed. I try to imagine what must be going through his tortured mind. He slowly raises his head and stares at me, as if suddenly remembering that he's not alone.

'Sorry, Mr Archer,' he says. 'Did I wake you?'

'It's not important,' I reply. 'Do you want to talk about it?'

'It's a recurring nightmare,' he says, 'but for some unexplainable reason it's been worse for the past couple of weeks. When I was a kid,' he pauses, no doubt considering whether to confide in me, 'my stepfather used to beat me and my mum with a leather strap, and I've suddenly started having nightmares about it all these years later.'

'How old were you at the time?' I ask.

'About six, but it carried on until I was sixteen, when my mum died.'

'How did your mother die?' I ask. 'After all, she can't have been that old?'

'It's all a bit of a mystery,' Terry says quietly. 'All I know for certain is that they found her body in the front room by the grate, and then my stepfather b.u.g.g.e.red off to Brighton with my stepsister.' I have a feeling that Terry knows only too well what and who caused his mother's death, but he isn't yet willing to impart that information. After all, he's well aware I'm writing a daily diary.

'So what happened to you when he disappeared off to Brighton?'

'I was taken into care, followed by Borstal, remand home and finally jail a different sort of education to yours.' How can those of us who have had a comparatively normal upbringing begin to understand what this young man has been through is going through?

'Sorry,' he repeats, and then climbs back onto the top bunk, and is asleep again within minutes.

I climb out of bed, clean my teeth, rub a cold flannel over my face and then settle down to write for the first session of the day.

At this early hour, all the other prisoners are asleep, or at least I a.s.sume they are, because not a sound is coming from the surrounding cells. Even the early-morning patrol of barking Alsatians doesn't distract me any longer.

In London I live near a railway track that winds its way into Waterloo, but I am never woken by the late-night or early-morning trains. In prison, it's rap music, inmates hollering at each other, and Alsatians that don't disturb a lifer's dreams. Once I've completed my two-hour session, I begin the lengthy process of shaving.

Although my life is beginning to fall into a senseless routine, I hope to at least break it up today by going to the gym. I've put my name down for the 10 am to 11 am session this morning, as I'm already missing my daily exercise.

9.06 am

Just after nine, the cell door is opened and my weekly twelve pounds fifty pence worth of canteen provisions are pa.s.sed over to me by a lady in a white coat. I thank her, but she doesn't respond. I sit on the end of my bed, unpack each item one by one. I settle down to enjoy a bowl of cornflakes swimming in fresh milk. This is the meal I would normally have in my kitchen at home, an hour before going to the gym. I'm used to a disciplined, well-ordered life, but it's no longer self-discipline because someone else is giving the orders.

10.00 am I'm pacing up and down the cell waiting for the gym call when a voice bellows out from below, 'Gym is cancelled.' My heart sinks and I stare out of the barred window, wondering why. When the door is eventually opened for a.s.sociation, Derek, known as Del Boy, who runs the hotplate and seems to have a free rein of the block, appears outside my door.

'Why was gym cancelled?' I ask.

'A con has got out onto the roof via a skylight in the gym,' he explains. Result gym closed until further notice and will not open again until security has double-checked every possible exit and the authorities consider it a safe area again. He grins, enjoying his role as the prison oracle.

'Anything else I can help you with?' Del Boy enquires.

'Bottled water and an A4 writing pad,' I reply.

'They'll be with you before the hour has chimed, squire.'

I've already learnt not to ask what myriad of deals will have to be carried out to achieve this simple request. James had warned me on my first day about the prison term 'double-bubble', meaning certain favours have to be repaid twice over. During a.s.sociation yesterday evening, I witnessed Derek cut a rolled-up cigarette in half and then pa.s.s it over to another prisoner. This was on a Tuesday, and the hapless inmate knew he wouldn't be able to repay the debt until today, when he would have his next canteen.

But his craving was so great that he accepted, knowing that he would have to give Del Boy a whole cigarette in return, or he could never hope to strike up another bargain with him or anyone else, for that matter.