by David Smith
He switches to formal: ‘Right then, Smith, I’ll put your name down for the governor in the morning.’
‘Stand to the line and give your number and name to the governor,’ the screw shouts. I step forward and two more screws stand in front, eye-balling me.
‘806713 Smith, sir, request to come off Rule 43.’
I’m moved to Lancaster Prison: the castle. Jesus Christ, the walls are even higher than Walton. I walk into reception, carrying my life in a box: letters, photos and the picture frames I’ve made out of spent matchsticks. The two Liverpool escort screws sign me over and I’m officially the property of HM Prison Lancaster.
I notice the Red Bands (trustee cons) hovering about idly. The screw reads through my file and looks up at me, turning the pages slowly. He grunts and places it deliberately on the table before walking away and occupying himself with something else. A Red Band steps forward, opens the file and flicks through the pages. He closes it and coughs; the screw returns. I hear Mr Heywood telling me to watch my back – I’m not even through reception yet and the whole fucking place will know of my arrival within minutes.
The Red Bands lead me to the bathrooms, where I shower fast – many a battering is dished out when you’re stark naked. I’m given my tobacco and a pre-paid reception letter, so that I can write home, and taken to my ground-floor cell. It’s a million years away from my Walton shit hole; it has a clean linoleum floor, pale blue walls, a table area and single bunk, a washing bowl and water jug. Underneath the bunk is a clean piss-pot. I’m impressed.
I put my belongings on the bunk and close the cell door automatically. A minute later a screw barges in and tells me: ‘The doors stay open in this nick till lights out.’ I try to process the thought, as I settle down, arranging my photos and then writing a letter. I feel OK until mealtime arrives. Nervously, I follow the cons into the vast, busy mess hall. I join the queue for grub after collecting my tray and cup. The con ladling out the food asks me if I want more than the amount he’s already slapped onto my plate. I stare down at it, shocked that no one moves to spit in it when the screws aren’t looking. The other surprise is the quality of the food; I collect as much bread as I can eat – real bread, not the stodgy crap we got in Walton – and search for somewhere to sit.
Panic suddenly grips me. I’m not used to being with so many people and can’t handle it. I need my cell with its door shut; I want to be locked up. I leave the hall with my tray and walk quickly back to my cell, closing the door behind me. I stand with the tray in my hands, sweating and shivering at once.
The door opens. ‘You eat with the rest of them,’ the screw tells me. ‘There’s no segregation in here. Only down in the block.’
‘I want to eat on my own.’
The screw jerks his head. ‘Out with you.’
I go back to the mess with my tray, tip the food into the bin and return to my cell again. During the night, I listen, door open, to the cons laughing at the comedy programme on telly. They play pool, darts, chess, dominoes, cards . . . I lie on my bunk, thinking. I’ve sent out my visiting order and hope I’ll soon see Maureen. But I already miss the restricted regime of Walton and being alone for much of the day. In Walton, I could lose myself in memories, drifting back to a place of cobbled streets and short pants, old ladies and Sunday dinners, bath nights and lovely warm beds, and best of all . . . another adventure with Tom Sawyer.
The days drift by. I eat with the cons but sit without speaking while people chatter to the left and right of me. I’m given a decent job in the metalwork shop, where I can earn a bit extra to buy tobacco and toiletries, but after only a few hours I stand up and approach the boss.
‘Take me back, please.’
He looks at me blankly.
‘Boss, please, I need to go back to my fucking cell.’
He hits the button and I’m taken back into the main prison, to my own little room. I spend as much time as I can there in the next few days, sitting quietly with an unopened book or else gazing at the walls. My head feels thick and dull; twice a day I walk the line but a different sort of fear is beginning to take hold of me. I want to see Maureen and make everything ‘right’ for us, but my grasp on reality is weakening. I keep closing my cell door and the screws bang it open without speaking to me. I stare at them, wondering why the door can’t stay shut until I’ve worked out if I’m ill in the head now, or if I was ill before I got here and am getting better, or if I’m becoming ill. Nothing makes sense, and what’s going on in my head least of all.
I sit in the library, alone, thinking, endlessly fucking thinking. I’m so tired, I’m so very, very tired. Mother of God, please lift me out of this mess, take me away, I want to sleep and I want the hurting to stop, I feel like ripping myself apart. The real world hurts too much and I don’t want to be part of it. I want to be seven years old again, pretending to be Jesse James as I dodge the traffic on Stockport Road, heading home from the Apollo after a cowboy film and an orange lolly. Help me do the right thing before I close my eyes. Make it real.
When the morning post arrives, my name and number is listed at last on the mail board. My spirits soar; I’m delighted for myself, collecting the barest of breakfasts – a mug of tea and some toast – because I don’t want to waste time in the queue.
I seek out the screw, feeling high: ‘Morning, boss, mail for 806713 Smith.’ I think quickly to myself: please, God, don’t let it be from Dad, don’t let it be from my fucking dad, not this time, please not this time. I’m handed the letter in its opened envelope – pre-read in the censor’s office – and recognise the handwriting. Yes, yes, fucking yes. It’s from Maureen.
I find a table and bench, sip my tea and make two roll-ups. I sniff the envelope; yes, that’s her scent on the paper. I pull out the pages and read.
There are six or seven sheets, folded neatly together. I read one and place it down, resting the second carefully on the first and so on until I reach the end: ‘I’ll miss you forever, love, Maureen. xxxxx.’
I count the five kisses.
This isn’t right, it’s all gone wrong – I didn’t plan it like this. I light the second roll-up, my insides pitch and heave, my hands have gone; the trembling moves up my arms and into my shoulders. I read the letter a second time, more slowly, taking in every word, reading certain lines over and over and over again: she’s received my visiting order but won’t be using it . . . she complains about Dad . . . there are too many arguments . . . the boys are OK . . . the new house in Moss Side is all right, she likes it . . . she’s been going out a lot with Joyce . . . Then the killer hook: We need a break, I have something to tell you, remember Tom, yes, I remember Tom, please don’t write again, I’ll burn your letters, no more visiting orders, I’ll miss you forever, love, Maureen. xxxxx.
I put the pages on top of each other again, one, two, three . . . My head hurts, why is everybody talking so loudly, who turned the volume up, the noise is deafening but there are no words, just noise. I look up and see mouths moving out of control and the place throbbing with people, thousands of them, all shouting, pouring in through the doors like water, collecting trays and still shouting.
I’m shaking from head to foot.
I can smell Maureen on the notepaper, but it feels as if the table is very far away and yet the ceiling is coming down. My fingers scramble across the Formica and I stuff the letter inside its envelope. People are still flooding into the room, yelling through mouths that gape like railway tunnels. I need to get somewhere . . . I need to be behind a closed door.
I head for the library, but it’s locked – too early in the morning for reading. I try other doors, but they stay shut, and in the end I go back to my cell, my small, blue linoleum cell. I stand with my head bent, Maureen’s letter in my hand, feeling all the bad fucking madness of the world building up. I want to think without some nosy screw or smart-arse con telling me to come out, making me lose the plot.
The plot. The plot. The fucking plot. For fuck’s sake, what fucking
plot? There’s a swarm of something hot and rotten in my head, everything is running backwards like a film reel: Maureen, Miss Jamaica, a man lying in the street bleeding, Tom, ganja, curried goat, blowback Saturday nights and shit-faced Sunday mornings, a neon factory so cold it takes the skin off your hands, flat 18 with the heating turned up, pounding the Hattersley streets in the early hours with wild things, flashbulbs going off left, right and fucking centre through the windows of a hired car, two detectives in shirt sleeves screaming and banging their fists against walls, the raw knuckles of a youth as he crawls under a table to save what’s left of his skull, a row of miniature wine bottles and staring down the barrel of a mad man’s gun, photographic proof, I’ve got photographic proof, Myra fucking Hindley and her shark-black eyes, moonlight on a reservoir, the tiniest of white coffins going into the earth, a registry office with its wood and ink smell, standing victorious in the boxing ring at Kings Hall, a tramp with an ugly smile and words that shatter, you’re too late little boy, she’s dead, FUCK YOU ALL, cook the man his rice and beans and shove it down your fucking throats, five kisses, Maureen, why did you send me five kisses, one each: Dave, Maureen, Paul, David and John, but you forgot Angela, just like you’ve forgotten everything else because you’re a fucking Hindley and your name is shit, shit, shit.
The pain squeezes itself tighter around my skull. I take a deep breath. I’m going to close the door now, nice and gently, no fuss. I know it’s against the rules and I don’t want it to be a problem but I really do need to close this door, just for a short time, and just to show you I want to be alone for a while, to have a little think with myself. I’ll barricade myself in but don’t let it concern you, just walk away with your keys and do not disturb, no one will get hurt, I only want to hurt myself . . .
The floor has vanished beneath a litter of shredded photographs and letters. Who did that? I don’t remember tearing them, but everything is in a million tiny pieces, including me. The razor blade glides gracefully down my arm, the red lines appearing like magic. If I place my hand over the blood, it bubbles up through the gaps in my fingers. This isn’t a problem; I like it, everything feels all right now. I’m alone in my room with my lovely clean piss-pot and I’m bleeding. Life isn’t too bad, after all – I just needed to find a way of coping and this is it. Red splashes cover the floor at my feet, small circles, slowly at first, one by one, then faster and wider. I run the blade down my arm again, and feel satisfaction at being able to follow the first cut so precisely. This pain is a good pain. I press harder into the skin and watch in fascination as the wound opens cleanly, gushing blood. How deep will I need to push before I reach the bone?
Keys rattle in the lock. They just won’t leave you alone for five minutes in this place. Shoulders slam against the door but the barricade holds. Please do not disturb. I look at the photographs on the floor, all torn and jagged, who did that, what’s happened to this day, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. It’s so quiet and peaceful in the little blue room. But when I look at the photographs I feel so sad. I hear a voice coming through the door: come on, lad, let us in, open up, we can talk, no problem is this big. I make one more cut in my skin and then I pick up Maureen’s letter. I’m sitting on the floor and holding the letter against my bent knee. Her words vanish under my blood. I don’t have a problem with it now. I’m just so tired, so very, very tired.
I listen to the whispers outside my door and the rhythmic push of shoulders against it. My cell slate, on the other side of the door, tells everyone who I am: 806713 Smith, three years, RC. And so they fetch the priest. The Judas-hole is filled with the watery eye of God’s messenger and he talks to me, calling me David, wanting to share my pain. Why share it, Father, when you can have it all? I never wanted it. He asks to share my bad news too, he knows I’ve received a letter and would like to read it with me. Isn’t that nice of him? I genuinely think it’s nice of him. No one’s read to me in years. Then I remember it wasn’t that long ago someone read to me. No, it wasn’t that long: should murder be punished by murder? Undoubtedly not . . .
Somewhere on the side of my neck is an important vein. I wonder how deep it is and will it hurt. I raise the blade and consider. It feels weirdly heavy as it touches my skin.
‘David, this is a priest asking you to open the door, you mustn’t hurt yourself any more, think of what that might mean, I’ll come in on my own, just me and you, nobody else, just us . . .’
I realise then, astonished, that they think I’m committing suicide. Don’t they know I only want to feel a good sort of pain for once? I only want it to hurt enough to stop me from feeling anything else. I only want to pierce this vein once and it’ll be all right. If I blow my brains out with one of the guns I used for target practice on a railway sleeper buried in the heather and dark earth, then I’ll be a free man. That’s not fucking suicide, is it? That’s just my way of dealing with the pain.
It takes seconds for the barricade to come down with an army of screws against it. But when the priest comes in, he’s alone. The screws wait silently outside, as he lifts the razor blade from my fingers and blesses me. He reads what he can of the letter and tells me the officers need to come in. I sit on the bunk and let the prison doctor attend to my arm. He asks me if I am all right. I tell him politely no, and he nods, pressing the needle into my arm. Outside I can hear the Principal Officer asking why my letter was issued to me when it had been stamped as read in the censor’s office (bad news is always referred to the doctor first). I see Mr Heywood from Walton standing in front of me like the ghost of Christmas future. He isn’t really here, but I can see him, nodding wisely and telling me, ‘Watch your back and walk away.’
They’ve got me.
I sit quietly on the bed, holding a mug of tea that’s gone stone cold. I’m foggy-headed because the sedative has taken over, but I understand that I’m to be ‘shipped out’ back to Walton today.
Today. Is it still only today . . .
A few hours later I’m standing in front of a doctor, quiet and docile. I don’t remember getting to Walton, not properly. I think I was in a car, staring out of the window. Everything seems to have happened a long time ago; hours and years have become the same. I’d like to have a hot bath and a little sleep, I’d like to be able to sleep next to a woman who loves me so much she buys me every comic on the market. I’d like to be held in her arms, tight and close.
I’m asked how I feel. Not too good – my head is like cotton wool and my mouth is very dry, very dry. The doctor tells me to relax and take a few breaths; he wants to ask me something and he’d like me to think carefully before I answer. Do I understand?
‘Yes, sir, I think I do.’
He pauses for a minute, and then asks, ‘Do you feel you want to hurt yourself?’
The question bores straight through my skull into the back of my brain where everything is dark and confused. ‘I’ll miss you forever, love Maureen. xxxxx.’ Five kisses: one each, but nothing for Angela.
‘Yes, I want to hurt myself.’
He writes something in my file and says he understands. I think: what the fuck does everybody understand, all of a sudden? Then he nods at two nurses, who take me by the arms and walk me down a corridor.
My new room has no linoleum and it isn’t pale blue; it’s white and padded. I undress and the straightjacket is brought in – just for a while. I’m put into it very quickly, no fuss. There’s a very thin mattress on the floor and a piss-pot, nothing else.
Roll over, this is just something to relax you and help you sleep.
I smell fresh aftershave as the needle goes in.
*
I wake up and fall asleep again, I open my eyes and see a pair of boots, I feel the needle and go back to sleep, I see a tray of food and then it’s gone. I think I’ve been sick but I’m not sure. I have a permanent headache for a long time and then it’s over.
I wake and lift myself up. The straightjacket has gone and I’m wearing a surgical gown; I can feel my arse throug
h the gaping fabric. I feel putrid. The front of the gown is stained and stiff; somewhere along the line I think I must have soiled myself. I can smell it in the air, but the piss-pot is gleamingly empty. They’ve cleaned me up, though I don’t know how many times. I prop myself up against the wall and drift in and out of sleep until my head clears. I wait for the door to open, willing it to open; I don’t want to be behind a closed door any more.
A nurse comes in and asks me gently if I’m fit to drink some tea. I ask him, ‘What day is it?’
He looks at me. ‘What day do you remember?’
I tell him, ‘It was a bad day.’
He nods. ‘Your bad day was four days ago, David.’
I nod, too. When I try to stand, my legs won’t support me.
‘Take it slowly. I’ll get you some tea.’
I sit and wonder how I’ve made it back from the edge.
I’m out of the padded cell, deemed calm enough to be moved to an ordinary hospital room within the prison. The days pass slowly but not bleakly, helped along by a few pills and a handful of deep sleeps. While I’ve been floating in a world I can’t remember, someone has been busy on my behalf: I’m to expect a ‘special’ visit with Maureen. Not a closed visit, but one where we can be together in order to talk properly.
Before then, I’m taken to meet a psychiatrist, who talks nonsense.
He wants to know if I have a ‘mother fixation’ and I stare at him, wanting to laugh. Of course I do, you fucking idiot, I’m fixated out of my mind with her. But I say nothing. He wants to learn whether I have a ‘persecution complex’ and I put my head on one side, looking at him. Of course I have, you fucking moron. Being constantly accused of murdering kids who are never seen again until they’re dug out of a bog on the moor does tend to make you feel ever so slightly persecuted.
I’m taken to see other psychiatrists, too, and so the mind games with the funny folk go on for a while. I tell them what they want to hear and they scribble away excitedly, muttering ‘excellent’ and ‘marvellous’. We play silly games with paper and patterns and it all looks like spilt ink to me, but it keeps them happy. I’ve begun to eat again and fill myself with the stodgy prison bread; two slices of that and I can’t finish my dinner.