A Prison Diary Purgatory (2003) Read online

  3.15 pm

  Gym. It’s the over-fifties’ spinning session - nothing to do with politics. Don’t kid yourself - it’s agony. Forty-five minutes with an instructor shouting, ‘On the straight’, ‘Up the slope’, Hill climbing’, Taster, faster. I fall off the bike at four o’clock and Darren almost carries me back to my cell.

  5.30 pm

  Australia are 208 for 1 and looking as if they could score 700. I leave the cricket to get some loo paper from the store. This must be collected between 8.15-8.30 am or 5.30-6.00 pm; one roll per person, per week. As I come out of the store room, I notice my name is chalked up on the blackboard to see the SO. I go straight to Mr Meanwell’s office. He has several registered letters for me, including one from some ladies in Northampton, who have sent me a lavender cake.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re not allowed to have it until you move prisons or have completed your sentence,’ Mr Meanwell explains.

  ‘Why not?’ I ask.

  ‘It could be laced with alcohol or drugs,’ he tells me.

  As I leave the SO’s office, I spot a new prisoner with his right arm in a sling. I go over to have a chat: injuries usually mean stories. Was he in a fight? Was he hit by a prison officer? Did he fall or was he pushed? It turns out to be an attempted suicide. He shows me his wrist which displays three long, jagged scars forming a triangle which have been sewn up like a rough tear in a Turkish carpet. I stare for about a second at the crude, mauve scars before I have to turn away. Later, I’m relieved to discover that Jimmy reacted in the same way, though he tells me that if you really want to kill yourself, you don’t cut across the artery. ‘You only do that when you’re looking for sympathy,’ he adds, ‘because the screws will always get there in time. But one long slash up the arm will sever the artery, and youH die long before they can reach you.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ I say, ‘that’s some cry for help.’ ‘Yes, his father had a heart attack last week, and he’s just arrived back from the funeral.’

  ‘How many suicides have there been at Wayland while you’ve been here?’ I ask Jimmy.

  There was one about six weeks ago,’ he replies. ‘You’ll always know when one takes place because we’re banged up for the rest of the day. No one is allowed to leave their cell until the body has been removed from the prison. Then an initial report has to be written, and because so many officers become involved, including the governor, it never takes less than three hours. This prison’s pretty good,’ he adds. ‘We only get about one suicide a year. In Norwich, where I began my sentence, it was far higher, more like one a month. We even had a prisoner sitting up on the roof with a noose round his neck, saying he’d jump unless the governor dealt with his complaint.’

  ‘Did he jump?’

  ‘No, they gave in and agreed to let him attend his mother’s funeral.’

  ‘But why didn’t they agree to that in the first place?’

  ‘Because last time they let him out, he flattened a screw with one punch and tried to escape.’

  ‘So the governor gave in?’

  ‘No, the governor refused to see him, but he did allow the prisoner to attend the funeral, double-cuffed.’

  ‘Double-cuffed?’

  ‘First they cross the prisoner’s wrists before handcuffing him. Then they handcuff him to two officers with two separate pairs of handcuffs, one on either side.’

  Thank God they didn’t do that to me when I attended my mother’s funeral.

  It’s an irony that an hour later, when going through my mail, I find a razor-blade paper attached to the top of one of my letters, with the message ‘Just in case you’ve had enough.’ The blade itself had been removed by an officer.

  6.00 pm

  Exercise. Shaun (forgery) has begun to work on an outline drawing of the montage. His first model is Dale (wounding with intent), who is standing on the grass in the sun, arms folded - not a natural model (see plate section). Dale scowls as we pass him, while a few of the other prisoners shout obscenities.

  8.00 pm

  Nothing worth watching on television, so I finish Graham Greene’s The Man Within.

  10.00 pm

  I remove the newly washed clothes from all over my bed, where I had laid them out to dry. They are still wet so I hang them from every other available space - cupboard doors, the sink, my chair, even the curtain rail.

  I fall asleep, still worrying about the KPMG report and how long it will take for the police to agree that there is no case to answer. By the time you read this, Wayland will be a thing of the past. But for now, it remains purgatory.

  DAY 37 - FRIDAY 24 AUGUST 2001

  6.08 am

  I draw my newly acquired curtains to allow the rising sun to enter my cell. I discovered during exercise yesterday evening that they used to belong to Dennis (VAT fraud). No one knows how much of the 17.5 per cent he retained for himself, but as he was sentenced to six years, we have to assume it was several millions.

  Dennis applied for parole after two and a half years, having been a model prisoner. He heard nothing, so assumed that his request had been turned down. Yesterday, at 8 am, they opened his cell door and told him to pack his belongings. He was being released within the hour. The order had come from the Home Office the week before but, as his probation officer was on leave, no message had got through. Dennis had to borrow a phonecard - against prison regulations - to ask his wife to come and pick him up. He caught her just as she was leaving for work, otherwise he would have been standing outside the gates all day. That is how I inherited the fine net curtains which now adorn my cell, and when I leave they will be passed on to the new resident. I just hope I’m given a little more notice.

  Jimmy was also let out yesterday, but only for the day. He has just a few weeks left to serve before his release date, so they allow him out once a month on a town visit, from 9 am to 3 pm. This is part of the rehabilitation programme for any D-cat prisoner. Jimmy has been a D-cat, but resident in a C-cat prison, for over three months. He doesn’t want to move to an open prison because he’s coming to the end of his sentence and his family lives locally.

  Yesterday Jimmy visited Dereham. He was accompanied by an officer who, for reasons that will become clear, I shall not name. At lunchtime the officer gave Jimmy a fiver to buy them both some fish and chips (Dereham prices) while he went to the bank to cash a cheque. Jimmy collected the fish and chips, strolled over to the National Westminster and waited outside for the officer. When he didn’t appear, Jimmy began lunch without him. After the last chip had been devoured, Jimmy began to worry about what had happened to his guard. He went into the bank, but couldn’t see him, so ran out and quickly headed towards Lloyds TSB, a hundred yards away. As he turned the corner, he saw the officer running down the street towards him, an anxious look on his face. The two men fell into each other’s arms laughing; Jimmy didn’t want to be accused of trying to escape only six weeks before his release date, and the officer would have been sacked for giving a prisoner money to assist in that escape. Jimmy told me later that he’s never seen a more relieved man in his life.

  ‘Where are my fish and chips?’ demanded the officer, once he had recovered.

  ‘I had to eat them, guv,’ Jimmy explained, ‘otherwise yours would have gone cold.’ He handed over fifty pence change.

  8.00 am

  After breakfast I go in search of Stan (embezzler, PS21,000, eighteen months), the spur painter. I ask him if he’d be kind enough to come and look at my cell and see if he can recommend any way of brightening it up. I tell him I hate the white door and the black square around the basin and the black floor skirting.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he says, ‘but I can’t promise much. We only get colours that have been discontinued, or the ones no one else wants.’

  9.00 am

  Pottery. I fear this enterprise has proved to be a mistake. I simply don’t have any talent with clay. I’m going to ask Wendy if I can be transferred to the library or education. The Sun told its readers yester