Hell Read online

  James tells me about the film he and Nod (Nadhim Zahawi, a Kurdish friend) enjoyed on Sunday evening, Rush Hour 2, which in normal circumstances I would have seen with them.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he adds. ‘We’re keeping a list of all the films you would have enjoyed, so that you can eventually see them on video.’ I don’t like the sound of the word ‘eventually’.

  I talk to Will about when he expects to return to America and continue with his work as a documentary cameraman. He tells me that he will remain in England while his mother is so unsettled and feels in such need of him. How lucky I am to be blessed with such a family.

  An announcement is made over the tannoy to inform us that all visitors must now leave. Have we really had an hour together? All round the room a great deal of kissing commences before friends and family reluctantly depart. The prisoners have to remain in their places until the last visitor has been signed out and left the room. I spend my time glancing up and down the rows. The man whose kiss had been so overtly sexual now has his head bowed in his hands. I wonder just how long his sentence is, and what age he and his girlfriend will be by the time he’s released from prison.

  When the last visitor has left, we all file back out of the room; once again my search is fairly cursory. I never discover what the other prisoners are put through, though. Del Boy tells me later that if they’ve picked up anything suspicious on the video camera, it’s a full strip-search, plus sniffer dogs.

  On the way back to my cell, a Block Three prisoner tells me he will be going home next month, having completed his sentence. He adds that he had a visit from his wife who is sticking by him, but if he’s ever sentenced again, she’s made it clear that she’ll leave him.

  I’m only a few yards from my cell door when Mr Weedon tells me that the education officer wants to see me. I turn round and he escorts me up to the middle floor.

  The education officer is dressed in a smart brown suit. He stands up when I enter the room and shakes me by the hand.

  ‘My name’s Peter Farrell,’ he says. ‘I see you’ve put yourself down for education.’

  ‘Yes,’ I confirm. ‘I was rather hoping it would give me a chance to use the library.’

  ‘Yes, it will,’ says Mr Farrell. ‘But I wonder if I could ask you to assist us with those prisoners who are learning to read and write, as I’m rather short-staffed at the moment?’

  ‘Of course,’ I reply.

  ‘You’ll get a pound an hour,’ he adds with a grin.

  We talk for some time about the fact that there are a number of bright people among the prisoners, especially the lifers, some of whom would be quite capable of sitting for an Open University degree. ‘My biggest problem,’ he explains, ‘is that while the inmates can earn ten to twelve pounds a week in the workshops dropping teabags, jam and sugar into plastic containers, they only receive six pounds fifty a week if they sign up for education. So I often lose out on some potentially able students for the sake of tobacco money.’

  My God, there are going to be some speeches I will have to make should I ever return to the House of Lords.

  There is a knock on the door, and Mr Marsland, the senior officer, comes in to warn me that it’s almost time for my talk to the lifers on creative writing.

  4.00 pm

  The lecture is set up in one of the waiting rooms and is attended by twelve prisoners serving life sentences plus two officers to keep an eye on proceedings. There are two types of life sentence, mandatory and discretionary, but all that matters to a lifer is the tariff that has been set by the judge at their trial.

  I begin my talk by telling the lifers that I didn’t take up writing until I was thirty-four, after leaving Parliament and facing bankruptcy; so I try to assure them that you can begin a new career at any age. Proust, I remind them, said we all end up doing the thing we’re second best at.

  Once I’ve finished my short talk, the first two questions fired at me are about writing a novel, but I quickly discover that the other inmates mostly want to know how I feel about life behind bars and what changes I would make.

  ‘I’ve only been inside for eight days,’ I keep reminding them.

  I try valiantly to parry their questions, but Mr Marsland and his deputy soon have to come to my rescue when the subject changes to how the prison is run, and in particular their complaints about lock-up times, food, no ice* and wages. These all seem to be fair questions, though nothing to do with writing. The officers try to answer their queries without prevarication and both have so obviously given considerable thought to inmates’ problems. They often sympathize, but appear to have their hands tied by regulations, bureaucracy and lack of money.

  One prisoner called Tony, who seems not only to be bright but to have a real grasp of figures, discusses the £27 million budget that Belmarsh enjoys, right down to how much it costs to feed a prisoner every day. I will never forget the answer to that question – £1.27 is allocated for three meals per prisoner per day.

  ‘Then the caterers must be making a pound a day off every one of us,’ Tony retorts.

  The meeting goes on well beyond the scheduled hour, and it’s some time before one of the prisoners, Billy Little who hails from Glasgow, actually asks another question about writing. Do I use my novels to expound any particular political prejudice? No, I reply firmly, otherwise I’d have very few readers. Billy is a left-winger by upbringing and persuasion and argues his case well. He finds a great deal of pleasure in giving me a hard time and making me feel ill at ease with the other prisoners. By the end of a heated exchange, he is at least listening to my point of view.

  On the way back to the cells, Billy tells me he’s written a short story and some poetry. He asks if I would be willing to read them and offer an opinion; a sentence I usually dread when I’m on the outside. He nips into his cell on the ground floor, extracts some sheets of paper from a file and passes them over to me. I leave him to find Derek ‘Del Boy’ Bicknell waiting for me outside. He warns me that Terry, my cell-mate, has been talking to the press, and to be wary of saying anything to him.

  ‘Talking to the press?’

  ‘Yeah, the screws caught him on the phone to the Sun. I’m told that the going rate for an exclusive with anyone who has shared a cell with you is five grand.’

  I thank Derek and assure him I haven’t discussed my case or anything of importance with Terry and never would.

  When I return to my cell, I find Terry looking shamefaced. He confirms that he has spoken to the Sun, and they’re keen to know when I’m being moved to Ford.

  ‘You’ll be on the front page tomorrow,’ I warn him.

  ‘No, no, I didn’t tell them anything,’ he insists.

  I try not to laugh as I settle down to read through another three hundred letters that have been opened by the censor and left on the end of my bed. I can’t believe he’s had the time to read many, if any, of them.

  When I’ve finished the last one, I lie back on my bed and reluctantly pick up Billy Little’s twelve-page essay. I turn the first page. I cannot believe what I’m reading. He has such command of language, insight, and that rare gift of making the mundane interesting that I finish every word, before switching off the light a few minutes after ten. I have a feeling that you’re going to hear a lot more about this man, and not just from me.

  Day 9

  Friday 27 July 2001

  2.11 am

  I am woken in the middle of the night by rap music blasting out from a cell on the other side of the block. I can’t imagine what it must be like if you’re trying to sleep in the next cell, or even worse in the bunk below. I’m told that rap music is the biggest single cause of fights breaking out in prison. I’m not surprised. I had to wait until it was turned off before I could get back to sleep. I didn’t wake again until eight minutes past six. Amazingly, Terry can sleep through anything.

  6.08 am

  I write for two hours, and as soon as I’ve completed the first draft of what happened yesterday, I strip