The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  Clement soon settled into the new routine, learning the basic hierarchies among both prisoners and staff. Time, as ever, hung heavily on his hands, although at least it could now be measured on a cheap Star Wars watch, which not even Willis could overvalue. Parker went to work every morning, filling bags with polished stones for sale in design shops, a task that would have defeated one of Carla’s Zen masters. Left alone in the cell, Clement had the perfect opportunity to plug the gaps in his reading but, despite an appeal to the governor, he was refused permission to bring in any books. While resigned to the constant flow of drugs, the authorities were intent on blocking the entrance of Madame Bovary and Buddenbrooks. Their only advice was that he ask a friend to present them to the library in the hope that he be allowed to borrow them first.

  One afternoon, as he lay on his bunk, grappling with a formulaic thriller, he was summoned to see the Head of Learning and Skills. The fear that he would be offered a choice between basic plumbing and GCSE maths faded when she asked if he would be willing to teach art.

  ‘Don’t you have anyone on the staff?’

  ‘We did. He was sacked for selling prisoners’ underwear to America.’

  ‘I’d have thought it was cheaper there.’

  ‘Soiled underwear.’

  ‘Oh! I see.’ He shuddered.

  ‘It’s one of the most popular courses and we can’t find anyone suitable. We’d pay you £2.35 an hour and give you enhanced status.’

  ‘Would that mean my own cell?’

  ‘As soon as one becomes available.’

  For all his doubts about his abilities as a teacher, he accepted. He was amazed at how rapidly the news of the course spread and, at Association that evening, he was waylaid by several prisoners keen to take it. He realised with dismay that the twelve places would be grossly oversubscribed, earning him more enemies than friends. He explained that it was not in his gift; although he was determined to earmark a place for Stick, a hyperactive man in his early twenties, with permanently tousled hair and track marks on his arms. He still felt guilty for his misapprehension when, after trailing him round the exercise yard, Stick had sidled up and introduced himself.

  ‘They call me Thick,’ he lisped. ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Take no notice. They’re the ones who are ignorant.’

  ‘Go on, guess!’

  ‘Because you’ve not had the right educational opportunities?’ he proposed hesitantly.

  ‘No, because I’m thin as a thick insect.’

  Clement’s relief that Stick had failed to catch his drift vanished when a group of onlookers pointed it out, in the hope of provoking a fight. Far from satisfying them, Stick seemed to see Clement as a brother in confusion, further warranting his sobriquet by clinging to him like a burr. Assured that he felt nothing more for him than for a stray dog, Clement resolved to take him in tow.

  ‘You like reading then?’ Stick asked, spotting the luridly covered thriller.

  ‘Most things.’

  ‘Me too! Last week I read a book about the Gulf War that was one and a half inches thick. Before that I read one about Rommel that was two inches thick. That only took me nine days.’ As he talked, Stick’s tic grew worse and he cast repeated glances over his shoulder. ‘Can I lend a phone card? Ring my kid?’

  ‘Of course,’ Clement said, shocked at the thought of such a callow father.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Of course you can borrow it.’ He held it out to Stick, whose hands seemed to be operating independently as one reached out to take it while the other pushed it away.

  ‘You didn’t ought to do that! It’s wrong!’ He sounded affronted. ‘See, you wouldn’t just be giving it to me but taking it away from your own family. I know God says, if someone asks you for something, you got to give it to them but I bet you He understands.’ Clement was as bemused by his point of reference as by his change of heart. ‘Do you want to hear my joke?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Who’s the biggest liars in the world?’

  ‘I don’t know. Who are the biggest liars in the world?’

  ‘Chemists, cos they keep making things up.’

  Scarcely had he delivered the punchline when he was felled by an actual punch. As Stick clutched his jaw, Clement stared at the three men who had crept up behind them.

  ‘Beg pardon, your honour,’ one said with a mocking bow, ‘but this little tart has some business with us. It’s pay-up time.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Stick squealed.

  ‘You can’t add up, Sunshine. The day after yesterday equals today.’

  Stick’s terror galvanised Clement. Feeling that nothing the men could do to him would be as painful as the knowledge of his cowardice, he pressed forward. ‘Leave him be!’ he ordered, thankful that his voice at least had not betrayed him. The men gazed at him dumbfounded. ‘I can see that he owes you – ’

  ‘You’re fucking right he does. Big time!’

  ‘But I’m sure there’s some way it can be settled.’

  ‘You’re right there too. Mr Phillips is waiting for him in his cell.’

  Stick whimpered.

  ‘He’s just a boy.’

  ‘He’s a tart. A little tart,’ one of them said, signalling his disgust with his foot. Clement searched for the officers but they were both deep in conversation, no doubt with the trio’s associates. He tried to pull Stick away, only for one of the men to grab his arm and hiss in his face: ‘I won’t tell you again. Keep your nose out of places where it don’t belong. Else you’ll be next on the list.’

  Refusing to back down, Clement pushed the man off and leant over to help Stick up. He felt a wrench on his shoulder and steeled himself for a blow when the command to ‘Give it up!’ made his attacker freeze. Clement assumed that the clash had been spotted by one of the officers, but a quick glance showed that they remained occupied at the far end of the hall. His rescuer turned out to be a mountainous bodybuilder, reputedly the strongest man on the block, a claim that might soon be put to the test.

  ‘Lay one finger on him and you’ll be pissing out of plaster trousers.’

  ‘Leave it out, Des!’ said one.

  ‘This has nothing to do with you,’ said another.

  ‘I say different. Now get the fuck out!’

  Clement watched amazed as the three men yielded to Des’s quiet authority. Muttering curses and with a final face-saving kick at Stick, they slipped away. Stick jumped up and immediately began punching the air. ‘I could take them. They came at me from behind. Two minutes more and I’d have had them.’

  ‘Piss off, freak!’ Des said.

  ‘I tell you I could have – ’

  ‘I said “Piss off!”’ As Stick slunk away with an injured expression, Clement gazed at Des, wondering at his change of mood. ‘You should steer well clear of that little bastard. He’s anyone’s for a Twix.’

  ‘Do you know what it was all about?’

  ‘Drugs. More dealers here than King’s Cross. But don’t worry. They won’t bother you again. Not if they know what’s good for them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve been watching you.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘I’ve been watching out for you.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Clement asked nervously.

  ‘Desmond Connelly.’ Clement shook his head. ‘Rafik’s friend.’ Clement’s heart missed a beat. ‘I was sent down eighteen months ago.’

  ‘I remember.’ Clement’s gratitude for his rescue was soured by rancour towards the man he blamed for Rafik’s deportation.

  ‘Since then I’ve done a lot of thinking. Well I’ve had the time, haven’t I? I know I was a total arsehole. But Jesus forgives me.’

  ‘Jesus Christ?’

  ‘He found me here in this nick. I went to a prayer group run by one of the screws. He brought me the good news of Jesus’ love.’ The mention of Christ turned Clement’s thoughts back to Rafik. For all his offer of protection, he remained unsure how much Desmo
nd knew of their friendship and how far his jealousy had been cured.

  ‘I wonder…’ he asked tentatively. ‘Have you had any news from him… Rafik?’

  The cloud that swept over Desmond’s face anticipated his answer. ‘Not from Rafik, no. I wrote to the only address I had in Algeria. To him. To his father. Not a word!’

  ‘Me neither! I went down the Embassy route, but it was hopeless.’

  ‘Then, after a year – no, more like a year and a half – of silence, I got a letter six weeks ago. The landlady of our place in Willesden, she forwarded it. Somehow she registered it was important.’

  ‘Maybe the stamp?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Desmond said, as though the thought had just struck him.

  ‘And…?’ Clement asked anxiously.

  ‘It was from one of his friends… a teacher. The one Rafik used to say had taught him everything.’

  ‘Really?’ Clement was determined to give nothing away.

  ‘He wrote that Rafik was dead.’

  Clement steadied himself as the floor began to shake and the room drained of colour. The news to which he had thought himself inured began to seep through his body. He pictured the lustrous olive skin and limpid brown eyes that he had made such vain attempts to capture. Turning back to Desmond, he felt a renewed resentment of the man who had known the comfort of Rafik’s flesh rather than the struggle for its depiction. His Christ was dead, and the journey that had brought him here was complete.

  ‘Did he say what happened?’ he asked, both needing and dreading the details.

  ‘Near enough. He’d been in prison and released in some sort of government amnesty. That didn’t please his friends, the mullahs, who sent him death threats. Then, when he went into hiding, they kidnapped two of his brothers and swore to kill them if he didn’t give himself up.’

  ‘But his brothers’ threats to kill him were what led him to run away!’

  ‘Tell me about it! They’d treated him so badly… they’d made him feel so bad about himself that, when it came to the crunch, he didn’t believe he deserved to live.’

  Clement was tormented by the image of the man whom he had painted as Christ taking on the role for real, sacrificing his life to save his persecutors. Moreover, he could not dispel the feeling, however fanciful, that Rafik’s hand lay behind his encounter with Desmond. Intrigued by Desmond’s transformation from murderer to knight errant, he wondered whether it could all be ascribed to his conversion and, if so, how he justified his sexuality. In a bid to find out more, he accepted Desmond’s invitation to the prayer group the following Friday, finding his worst fears confirmed the moment he entered the room.

  ‘Officer Willis!’ he said.

  ‘It’s Jim in here. Isn’t that right, Jim?’ one of the group said.

  ‘That’s right, lad. No worldly distinctions inside this room. We’re all of us sinners in the eyes of God.’

  ‘You said it, Jim,’ the man replied, relishing his temporary licence.

  The room filled with so many unlikely converts that Clement wondered whether, as in the Brixton chapel, the main attraction was an excuse to escape their cells. Desmond took a seat at the far side of the circle, nodding to him briefly before picking up his Bible. Stick grabbed the chair beside him, nudging it so close that their thighs brushed, giving him a momentary sense of satisfaction and a lingering one of unease. With everyone gathered, Officer Willis (Clement remained suspicious of the Jim) announced a period of silent prayer which, as soon became clear, was as nominal as every other silence in prison. Voices were raised from all points of the circle: ‘I want to thank you Lord for the blessing of this nick where I can get near to you with no distractions,’ from his left; ‘I feel your Holy Spirit, Lord, like a golden crown on my head,’ from his right. Meanwhile, ‘I thank you Lord Jesus for giving me the greatest fix ever,’ came from the seat next to him, prompting a couple of guffaws and several groans. After a peremptory Amen, which cut through all pretence of equality, Willis called on a young Scotsman to read the Gospel. No sooner had he provided chapter and verse for the familiar story of the woman taken in adultery than the entire group opened their Bibles, although Clement noted in bewilderment that Stick turned to Acts.

  He sat silently while Willis encouraged them to analyse the text. After three variations on the theme that we were all miserable sinners unworthy of salvation unless we obeyed the Word of the Lord, Stick put up his hand.

  ‘Sir, sir, please, Jim sir!’ he said, bobbing up and down like a four-year-old. ‘Can I tell my joke, sir?’ His request met with a chorus of ‘No’s. ‘It’s about the story, sir. Honest!’

  ‘But is it clean, lad?’ Willis said. ‘Can you put your hand on heart and tell me it’s fit for your mother?’

  ‘He’s not fit to have a mother!’

  ‘Shut it, lad!’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die, sir… Jim sir!’

  ‘Very well then,’ Willis said stoically. ‘Keep it clean, mind.’

  ‘There’s the Lord Jesus. He’s walking through the desert one day and he sees all these people picking on this prossie… sorry, Jim sir, tart. And he says, “Let anyone who hasn’t ever sinned chuck the first stone at her.” And he looks at them, happy cos he knows that they’re evil and wicked sinners like us. And then he hears this stone whizzing past his ear. And he turns round to see who’s disobeyed him. And there’s the Holy Virgin Mary standing there with a great pile of stones. “Mam,” he says, all hurt – I mean hurt cos she’s shown him up, not cos the stone hit him – “Mam,” he says, “I thought I told you to stay at home!”’

  Stick gazed around, hungry for approval, to be met with sighs, groans and grimaces.

  ‘Any repetition of that, lad, and you’ll be barred,’ Willis said. ‘Understand?’

  ‘But it’s the same story,’ Stick pleaded.

  ‘Understand!’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Stick replied sullenly.

  While Willis took exception to Stick, Clement was far more disturbed by Joe, a young Nigerian, who claimed that the moral was ‘Even when the Muslims mock you and persecute you, you mustn’t fight back but leave them to the angels who’ll throw rocks at them once they’re dead.’ With Willis letting the remark pass, Clement put forward the alternative view that the story exemplified God’s all-forgiving love and that they shouldn’t be misled by the final ‘Go, and sin no more’, which scholars had shown to be an interpolation.

  ‘What scholars?’ Willis asked.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have their names to hand.’

  ‘Surprise surprise! Not a scrap of evidence.’

  ‘But it wouldn’t be hard to get hold of them. I did a lot of research for a painting called the Two Marys.’

  ‘We know all about your paintings,’ Willis said. ‘Filth!’ Clement’s hope that Desmond, whose dead lover was implicated in that filth, would once again ride to his rescue was dashed by his silence. ‘Whatever Mr Hippy-hair here thinks, we’re not stupid, are we lads? We know how books are made. We know how words go missing over time. But this isn’t your Jeffrey Archer or even your Shakespeare. It’s God’s book: the Holy Bible. A book like a great wall that keeps the Devil out and the righteous in the ways of the Lord. Remove a single brick and the wall will crumble. Where will we be then?’

  ‘In Satan’s hands?’ one of the men asked.

  ‘Right! Locked up in Hell for ever.’

  ‘With respect,’ Clement said with blatant insincerity, ‘that’s not faith but fire insurance. If you read the Gospels – and I’m sure everyone here has – ’ His voice faltered as he found himself staring at Stick – ‘you’ll know that Christ makes very little mention of sin.’

  ‘Remember, lads, the Devil quotes scripture for his own ends.’

  ‘His overwhelming concern is with God’s redeeming love. We must all hold on to that. Be proud that God created us in His image. Be proud that Christ took on our flesh.’

  ‘And what have we done with that flesh?’ Willis asked. ‘Defiled
it. Debased it. Made it a cesspit of foul lusts and diseases, as you should know better than anyone.’ Clement wondered if Desmond’s offer of protection would hold good against partisan officers. ‘What do any of these men have to be proud of? They’ve destroyed their families. Left wives without husbands… children without fathers. It’s shame they should be feeling, not pride.’

  Clement detected a rumble of discontent at Willis’s shift from we to they. He recalled Mike’s denunciation of shame and longed to free his fellow prisoners from an emotion that sentenced them twice. ‘None of us here needs to feel ashamed,’ he said, emphasising the pronoun. ‘Why should you make these men feel worse about themselves than they already do?’

  ‘To bring them to God. To ensure that, even though they’re the lowest of the low in this world, they’ll be God’s chosen ones in the next.’

  A burst of Amens and Hallelujahs left Clement convinced that his own words had fallen on deaf ears. Seizing his advantage, Willis ordered the group to bow their heads in prayer before bringing the meeting to a close. While the men broke up the circle and replaced the chairs in rows, Willis confronted Clement. ‘Don’t think I don’t know your game,’ he said. ‘It’s not enough for you to defy the Bible on your own account. You want to bring these men down with you. Well, I won’t let you. That lad,’ he pointed to Stick, who for no discernible reason was balancing a chair on his head, ‘was giving himself to every man on the block for a packet of smokes until he found the Lord. That man – ’ he pointed to a stocky man with a goitre – ‘was cutting his wrists as regularly as the rest of us – ’ he scowled at the sight of Clement – ‘most of us – cut our hair. Are you telling me they’re no better off?’