It was not, of course. In fact, any communication was very difficult indeed, once we had entered the gaol. The gates clanged in the manner made familiar by so many novels and films; the warders, rattling keys, darted about with a kind of embarrassed fussiness, having evidently been ordered to treat us exactly like any other prisoners, and not quite being able to bring themselves to do it. Prisons, I was to learn, are the most snobbish of institutions, and anyone whose name has appeared in the headlines is a constant source of awe and interest to staff and prisoners alike.
A really well-publicised criminal will risk punishment to keep his press-clippings about him, as though they were credentials.
We removed our clothes, but did not receive the usual bath, since it was apparently assumed that we were clean. The Medical Officer gave us a three-second inspection designed, presumably, to satisfy him that we were not infested with vermin. It would certainly not have disclosed anything more serious.
The prison uniform consisted of a jacket and trousers of coarse grey flannel, with a scarlet star on each shoulder to indicate that we were First Offenders; a striped grey shirt for wearing in the daytime and another for sleeping in; a blue tie; cotton singlet and trunks; thick grey socks and black shoes. After receiving these and other items of equipment, we were taken to our cells.
A prison cell is 13 feet long by 9 feet wide, with a slightly arched ceiling and a small barred window high up at the end opposite the door. It is painted in the usual institutional colour-scheme of green, white and cream; previous occupants have defaced the whitewash by scratching messages with a nail—‘Elsie, Elsie, Elsie’ or ‘Trust in the Lord’ or ‘Roll On April 1949’.The floor, at Winchester, was of concrete stained black, which the prisoners were supposed to polish. There was a bed of wooden boards with a thin coir mattress and pillow, two sheets, three blankets, a small looking-glass, a cake of soap, brushes for shaving, for hair, and teeth, a razor without a blade and a book of rules for the guidance of Convicted Prisoners, Male.
The door, fitting flush with the wall, had on the outside an ingenious system of bolts and spring-loaded locks, which snapped into action when the door was pushed to. There was something peculiarly final about the shutting of that door. Throughout the next year, whenever I was told to go to my cell and lock myself in, I hesitated for a moment before doing so, as a man hesitates before closing his own front door, making sure that his Yale key is in his trouser-pocket. But here there were no keys. It was like being locked in a safe. The only means of contact with the outside world were a bell-push, to be used only in case of sudden illness, and a round peep-hole of thick glass, through which the warders might peer while making their rounds. Even the electric-light switch was outside on the landing.
The first time that door clicked shut I sat down on the wooden chair, put my elbows on the table, and looked at my surroundings, making a mental inventory of them, examining their dingy colours and rough textures, and thinking: ‘I shall spend the next 365 days with these objects, or others like them, so I may as well get used to them. At the end of a week I shall know every square inch of this cell. I shall know the number of fly-specks on the light bulb, and the way the grain of the table-top runs, and the faint smell of this cake of soap, and the disposition of the lumps in the mattress and the shape of the stains on the blankets. I shall experience these things as vividly as though I loved them, which I never shall; but I must guard against hating them, or they will begin to drive me mad.’
Supposing I did go mad, taking refuge in insanity as so many others, goaded to the last limit, had done? I would scream and beat on the door, and nobody would come; there would be nothing but silence. I wondered whether many prisoners went mad, and if so whether they stayed mad until the morning, and what happened to them then? Were they sent to Broadmoor, or merely punished for wilful damage to the prison property—this bed, this chair, this table which I was already beginning to hate? If only I could switch off the light, so that I would no longer have to look at them! But the fight switch was outside.
The door opened. It was cocoa-time, and a prisoner—the first fellow-prisoner I had seen—was standing outside, holding a bucket. He had black hair carefully plastered across a low forehead, and shiny black eyes. As I held out my mug for him to fill, he looked around to see whether the warder was watching, and then, with a tremendous knowing wink, put something into my hand and slammed the door. I sat down and examined the gift. It was a match-box, containing a pinch of black tobacco, a few cigarette papers and a quantity of matches, split lengthways into four—tiny splinters of wood, each with a blob of phosphorus adhering to the end. I realised then that I was not alone. My cell was only one of hundreds, each containing someone as miserable and bored as I was, perhaps even more unlucky, and in one of them somebody had thought of me.
Next morning we were taken to work in the mail-bag shop, where we had our first chance of meeting the other prisoners. Since there was only one workshop at Winchester, it contained all kinds of convicts: the ‘Stars’ or first offenders, the ‘Ordinaries’ who had been in prison before, and ‘Debtors’ wearing brown coats to distinguish them from the convicted men.
Sitting slightly apart from the rest, with blue and white patches sewn on their suits, were the men who had tried to escape. They sewed the mail-bags, while the rest of us folded the canvas, cut the ropes into lengths, ripped up the worn-out bags and stitched metal rings on to the tabs. The debtors sat in a cloud of dust, unpicking a matted heap of coir fibre and stuffing it into mattresses.
An instructor explained what we were to do. My first job was waxing the mail-bag thread with a mixture of beeswax and lamp black; later I graduated to the table where the canvas was folded into the appropriate shapes. Two bored warders sat watching us to see that we got on with the work and did not talk. In spite of this, an extraordinary amount of communication took place by means of whispers, gestures and winks. I never realised before how much a wink could convey.
‘Sleep O.K.?’
‘Not too bad, thanks.’
Fold top, fold side, fold in half.
‘You’ll get used to it. Not bad here, really.’
‘What are the warders like?’
‘Screws, we calls them. Some of them are pigs. That one over there, for instance. Proper sadist.’
‘What does he do?’
Fold top, fold side, fold in half.
‘Eats sweets, for one thing.Unwraps them as slowly as he can, and then pops them into his gate, all gloating like. Careful, he’s watching you.’
Fold top, fold side, fold in half.
‘What are you in for, or doesn’t one ask?’
‘That’s all right, mate. Mutiny.’
‘Oh.’
‘Me and my oppo was in the Royal Navy, see, and one day we got a bit choked with the Master-at-Arms.... Careful.’
Fold top, fold side, fold in half. The warder’s eyes, pale blue under his peaked cap, swivelled slowly to the far side of the room, where a Jamaican stowaway was humming to himself a little too loudly.
‘So, being full of several rum rations, I tapped him on the nut. Didn’t know what I was doing, really.’
‘And what did you get?’
‘Twelve years.’
Fold, fold, fold. There’s always someone worse off than you.
‘I wonder what time it is?’
‘Soon find out. Psst, Ginger!’
A cadaverous youth sitting by the window looked up. The mutineer raised his hand to chest-level, turned his wrist and examined the place where his watch would have been. Ginger got up and looked out of the window to some distant clock.
‘Hey, you! Sit down!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What d’you want to know the time for? You’ve got plenty of time, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then don’t let me see you looking out of that window again, or I’ll have your guts for garters.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Stitch, stitch, st
itch. Fold, fold, fold. After a minute or two Ginger looked up and silently mouthed the words: twenty past ten.
‘Twenty past ten.’
‘Is that all?’
Fold top ... fold side ... fold in half....
Winchester Prison is a star-shaped building of red brick, looking as though it had been carved out of carbolic soap. Each arm of the star is a block of cells, comprising three landings connected by iron staircases and observation bridges. The spaces between the landings are covered with wire netting to discourage suicides. The corners between the cell-blocks are filled in with exercise yards and a few flowerbeds, and the whole building is surrounded by a high brick wall.
I was summoned to an interview by the Reception Board, which consisted of the Governor, the Chaplain and several other officials. The Governor did most of the talking. He was a middle-aged man with a kindly air and a head covered in sprightly grey curls. I was told to sit down.
‘Have you given any thought,’ the Governor asked, ‘to what you will do when you have completed your sentence?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I shall go on writing.’
He put his head on one side. ‘But not, of course, under your own name?’
‘I don’t see why not, sir.’
‘Well, you may find it a little more difficult than you imagine. Have you considered going to live abroad? People in your position often do, you know.’
‘If you will excuse me for saying so, sir, I think that would be a most cowardly course.’
‘Yes? Now tell me—do you believe in God?’
I hesitated. The Governor continued: ‘You see, if we can find out where you stand in that matter perhaps we shall be able to - er - sort you out in other ways.’ He looked under his eyebrows at the Chaplain, who fixed me with an interested stare.
‘Yes, I believe in God. But not the God of any of the organised religions. I believe there is something good in each one of us, and I suppose you could call that God.’
‘Don’t you practise any religion, then?’
‘No, sir. I think most of them have something to recommend them, but none of them has convinced me that it holds a monopoly of the truth.’
‘I see,’ said the Governor triumphantly. ‘So what you are doing is trying to find a religion that fits in with your own code of behaviour; isn’t that it?’
‘Certainly not,’ I replied, stung. ‘If that were so I should have picked on the Church of England, which has shown a great deal more tolerance and understanding towards people like me than any other church I know of.’
‘Really?’
The Chaplain’s lips moved, but he was evidently not meant to interrupt while the Governor was assessing a prisoner’s character. I wondered what the Governor was going to write about me: ‘truculent and aggressive,’ probably—but I hadn’t meant to be.
‘The Church of England Moral Welfare Council ...’ I began, but the Governor was looking at me testily. He did not seem to have heard of the Report, or at least did not wish to discuss it. ‘I see from your record that you have said you would be willing to undergo medical treatment.’
‘Yes, sir, if any is available.’
‘You will see the Medical Officer in due course.’
The Medical Officer was a hard-bitten little Scot with grey hair brushed into a schoolboyish bang. He had been a prison doctor at Brixton for many years. He asked me how I was feeling, listened to my heartbeats, told me to sit down and began firing off the usual psychiatrist’s questions, writing down my replies. Since my private life was now public property, I spoke frankly of my childhood and adolescence, while he grunted occasionally and his pen raced over the paper.
‘You say you know a lot of other homosexuals. Tell me, do you frequent the orgies in which they indulge?’
‘Orgies?’
‘Yes, I believe in Chelsea and places there are houses where male and female homosexuals congregate to carry out unnatural practices together.’
‘Do they? It sounds most unlikely to me.’
‘So I am told.’
If he has been a prison doctor for so long, I thought, possibly he knows more about it than I do.
‘Homosexuals do have meeting-places, of course,’ I said, ‘but they are usually quite respectable.’
‘What sort of places?’
‘Oh, public-houses mostly. There’s one in almost every district of London.’
‘Really? Is that so? I’ve never heard of that.’ In that case, I thought, you are singularly ill-informed.
‘Have you any hobbies?’
‘Yes, plenty.Gardening, going to the theatre, cooking, painting....’
‘But no sport?No golf or tennis, for instance?’
‘No.’
‘And what,’ he asked, ‘do you do on your free evenings? Go out importuning?’
I could have hit him.
‘Certainly not. I don’t do that sort of thing. In any case, I haven’t got the time. I only have one free evening a week, and I usually spend that with friends.’
‘Other homosexuals, of course?’
And so on.
The getting-up bell rang at 6.30 every morning. By 7 o’clock we were supposed to have our cells tidy and our beds made up in the approved manner, leaning against the wall with the bedding hanging over them, blanket-sheet-blanket-sheet-blanket, with the hems in line. Then our cells were unlocked, a razor blade was issued to each man, and after a quick shave in cold water we trooped out on to the landing for the ritual of Slopping Out.
There was one flush-toilet and one sink for every twenty cells on the landing, and one cold water tap. At each of these points, known collectively as Recesses, stood a queue of prisoners in various stages of undress, waiting to refill their jugs and pour the contents of wash-basin and chamber pot down the drain. The general effect, with three landings in view, was rather like some curious Neapolitan slum in which all the domestic chores were being done by men.
Carrying my chamber-pot self-consciously before me, I walked towards the recess. A voice behind me said:
‘You’re carrying that goddam pot as though it was the Holy Sacrament or something.’
‘Well, it isn’t. It’s the Holy Excrement.’
‘There’s a pretty unholy smell around here. Why can’t those guys get a move on?’
‘Have you been in long?’
‘Not here. I’ve just come from a London prison named Wandsworth. And before that I did four years in Sing-Sing.’
‘Are you from the States?’
‘No, I’m Canadian.’
‘What was Sing-Sing like?’
‘It was a cinch, beside this. Hell, they let me write short stories there, and sell them, too.’
‘I’m a writer as well.’
‘Go on? We must compare manuscripts. I’ve got permission to do a novel. I’ll dump the notebooks in your cell when we slop out on Saturday; there’s less chance of a search at the week-end. Come on, you’re missing your turn. See you tomorrow.’
It was not, I discovered, considered very polite to ask another prisoner what he was ‘in’ for. One usually found out soon enough. In my case, there was no need for anyone to ask. Everyone in the prison, apparently, had been following the trial with the most searching interest.
‘What I’d like to see,’ remarked one of the burglars, ‘is them two airmen coming in here. They wouldn’t half get a good hiding.’
‘Not a chance,’ I said. ‘They’re quite safe.’
‘Well, I’d like to see it, all the same. Cor, the Law didn’t half take a diabolical liberty with you. Why didn’t you get it stopped?’
‘I didn’t have a chance.’
‘Come off it. A nice bit of dropsy to a copper usually does the trick. “Why, constable,” you says’—and his voice took on the accents of Kensington— ‘“there must be some mistake!” And you drops a bundle of ready on the table, all nonchalant-like.’
‘Yes, perhaps. I never thought of it.’
‘That’s the trouble wi
th you blokes. Ain’t been properly brought up. I bet they tried to make you write a statement, too.’
‘Yes.’
‘Christ, it makes my heart bleed. Well, you’ll know better next time, won’t you?’
The official regulations allow a prisoner to write, and receive an answer to, one letter every two weeks. A good many of my friends did not know about this rule, and accordingly wrote to me. I was not allowed to read these letters, but whenever they arrived—which was almost every day—the Governor called me before him.
This ‘call-up’ entailed waiting outside the Governor’s office for anything up to an hour and a half. The prisoners were supposed to stand several feet apart, and were not permitted to talk to each other. As usual, we managed to ignore this rule.
One day I stood next to a thin, dark man with a slight Australian accent, who had been imprisoned for the theft of some jewellery. He asked me whether I was going to write a book about prison life. I said I probably would, some day. At this, I heard a shuffling sound behind me and realised that another prisoner was listening to the conversation, and edging up on me.
‘You can put this in your book,’ he hissed. ‘There’s needles in the soup.’
‘Needles?’
‘Yes, bloody great darning needles. I’m writing to my MP about it.’
‘Don’t take any notice,’ said the jewel thief. ‘He’s as nutty as a fruit-cake.’
‘Shut your trap, or I’ll do you. It’s true, Mr. Wildeblood, honest it is. I’ve got one in me now, long as your little finger.’
‘Have you seen the MO?’ I asked.
‘Yes, but d’you know what? He refuses to X-ray me. Refuses. So I goes to the Governor every morning to lodge an official complaint.’
Against the Law Page 12