Heaven Read online

  As each day passes, I tell myself that the stories will dry up and this diary with it. Well, not today, because Simon has just walked into SMU.

  Simon works in the officers’ mess, and although I see him every day I have not yet made his acquaintance. He’s visiting SMU to check on an application he submitted to visit his mother in Doncaster. He has, I fear, been dealing with an officer ironically known as ‘action man’. After six weeks and several ‘apps’, Simon has still heard nothing. After I’ve promised to follow this up, I casually ask him why he’s in prison.

  ‘I abducted my son,’ he replies.

  I perk up. I’ve not come across an abduction before.

  Simon pleaded guilty to abducting (‘rescuing’ in his words) his five-year-old son for forty-seven days. He whisked him off to Cyprus, via France, Germany, Yugoslavia and Turkey. He did so, he explains, because after he’d left his wife, he discovered that his son was being physically abused by both his ex-wife and her new partner, a police detective sergeant. The judge didn’t believe his story, and sentenced him to four years, as a warning to other fathers not to take the law into their own hands. Fair enough, and indeed I found myself nodding.

  A year later, his wife’s new partner (the detective sergeant) was arrested and charged with ABH (actual bodily harm), and received a three-year sentence for, among other things, breaking the little boy’s arm. Simon immediately appealed and returned to court to face the same judge. He pleaded not only extenuating circumstances, but added ‘I told you so’, to which the judge replied, ‘It doesn’t alter the fact that you broke the law, so you will complete your sentence.’

  Ah, I hear you say, but he could have reported the man to the police and the social services. You try reporting a detective sergeant to the police. And Simon has files stacked up in his room filled with dozens of complaints to the social services with replies bordering on the ludicrous, ‘We have looked into the matter very carefully and have no reason to believe …’ Simon had to sell his home to pay the £70,000 legal bills, and is now incarcerated in NSC, penniless, and with no knowledge of where his only child is. My heart goes out to this man.

  Would you have done the same thing for your child? If the answer is yes, then you’re a criminal.

  11.00 am

  A call for me over the tannoy to report to reception. Sergeant Major Daff is on duty. He is happy to release my drug-free radio. It’s a Sony three-band, sensible, plain and workmanlike. It will do the job and one only needs to look at the sturdy object to know it’s been sent by Mary.

  2.30 pm

  A quiet afternoon, so Matthew gives me a lecture on Herodotus. He is rather pleased with himself, because he’s come across a passage in book four of the Histories that could be the first known reference to sniffing cannabis (hemp). I reproduce the translation in full:

  And now for the vapour-bath. On a framework made up of three sticks, meeting at the top, they stretch pieces of woollen cloth, taking care to get the jams as perfect as they can, and inside this little tent, they place a dish with red-hot stones on it. They then take some hemp seed, enter the tent and throw the seed onto the hot stones. It immediately begins to smoke, giving off a vapour unsurpassed by any vapour bath one could find in Greece. The Scythians enjoy the experience so much that they howl with pleasure.

  3.40 pm

  Mr New and Mr Simpson interview me for my sentence plan. All the boxes are filled in with ‘No History’ (N/H) for drugs, violence, past offences, drink or mental disorder. In the remaining boxes, the words ‘Low Risk’ are entered for abscond, reoffend and bullying. The final box has to be filled in by my personnel officer. Mr New is kind enough to commend my efforts at SMU and my relationship with other prisoners.

  The document is then signed by both officers and faxed to Spring Hill at 4.07 pm, and is acknowledged as received at 4.09 pm. Watch this space.

  DAY 118

  TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2001

  5.51 am

  Write for two hours.

  8.30 am

  There are no new inductees today and therefore no labour board. Mr New will not be on duty until one o’clock, so Matthew and I have a quiet morning. He gives me a lecture on Alexander the Great.

  12 noon

  I phone Chris Beetles at his gallery. His annual Illustrators’ Catalogue has arrived in the morning post. There is the usual selection of goodies: Vickie, Low, Brabazon, Scarfe, Shepard, Giles and Heath Robinson. However, it’s a new artist who attracts my attention.

  The first edition of The Wind in the Willows was illustrated by E. H. Shepard, and after his death for a short time by Heath Robinson. But a new version has recently been published, illustrated with the most delightful watercolours by Michael Foreman, who is one of Britain’s most respected illustrators. Original Shepards are now changing hands for as much as £100,000 and Heath Robinsons can fetch £10,000. So it was a pleasant surprise to find that Mr Foreman’s works were around £500. I decide to select one or two for any future grandchildren.

  So in anticipation I turn the pages and begin to choose a dozen or so for Mary to consider. I have to smile when I come to page 111: a picture of Toad in jail, being visited by the washerwoman. This is not only a must for a future grandchild, but should surely be this year’s Christmas card. (See below.)

  4.00 pm

  An inmate called Fox asks me if it’s true that I have a laptop in my room. I explain politely to him that I write all my manuscripts by hand, and have no idea how to use a computer. He looks surprised. I later learn from my old room-mate Eamon that there’s a rumour going round that I have my own laptop and a mobile phone. Envy in prison is every bit as rife as it is ‘on the out’.

  5.00 pm

  I receive a visit from David (fraud, eighteen months). He has received a long and fascinating letter from his former pad-mate Alan, who was transferred to Spring Hill a week ago. Alan confirms that his new abode is far more pleasant than NSC, and advises me to join him as quickly as possible. He doesn’t seem to realize that the decision won’t rest with me. However, there is one revealing sentence: ‘An officer reported that they’ve been expecting Jeffrey for the past week, has he decided not to come?’ David feels that they must have agreed to take me, and are only waiting for my sentence plan, which was faxed to them yesterday.

  Incidentally, David (the recipient of the letter) was a schoolmaster in Sleaford before he arrived at NSC via Belmarsh. Three of his former pupils are also residents; well, to be totally accurate, two — one has just absconded.

  7.00 pm

  Doug and I watch the tanks as they roll into Kabul while Bush and Blair try not to look triumphant.

  10.30 pm

  I’m back in my room, undressing, when a flash bulb goes off.8 I quickly open my door and see an inmate running down the corridor. I chase after him, but he disappears out of the back door and into the night.

  I return to my room, and a few moments later, an officer knocks on the door and lets himself in. He tells me that they know who it is, as several prisoners saw the culprit departing. So everyone will know it was by this time tomorrow; yet another inmate who has been bribed by the press. The last three have been caught, lost their D-cat status, been shipped back to a B-cat and had time added to their sentence. I’m told the going rate for a photograph is £500. If they catch him, I’ll let you know. If they don’t, you’ll have seen it in one of the national papers, captioned: ‘EXCLUSIVE: Archer undressing in his cell’.

  DAY 119

  WEDNESDAY 14 NOVEMBER 2001

  8.15 am

  As I walk over to breakfast from the south block, I pick up snippets of information about last night’s incident. It turns out that the photographer was not a prisoner, but Wilkins, a former inmate who was released last Friday. He was recognized by several inmates, all of whom were puzzled as to what he was doing back inside the prison four days after he’d been released.

  But here is the tragic aspect of the whole episode. Wilkins was in prison for driving without a lic