Fifty Years of Fear

by Ross Greenwood

  My run of bad luck continued. As I held my breath in the enclosed compartment on the van, I heard the others groan when a heavy step with a familiar voice came on board.

  ‘Who wants to share a cell with me then?’

  I guess that’s why it was a family motto. I’d had the opportunity to take revenge on Kilkenny, yet I didn’t do what had to be done.

  The gods finally answered one of my prayers and they sent me to a different wing from Kilkenny. I later heard, through my cleaning job, that his business was thriving at his new home, too. Nasty for them. As a jail, I preferred it over Peterborough as everyone was in for something sick, therefore few were judgemental. There was still the occasional flash of horrific violence which ensured you remained vigilant.

  There were men with whole life sentences who would never get out, but the majority had minimum tariffs. For example, twenty years. I always thought these people would have nothing to lose and their behaviour would reflect that.

  However, inmates knew parole boards would go back to the start of the sentence when they were deciding if you were fit for life in the community twenty years down the line. If you hadn’t behaved, then you weren’t released. Twenty years could easily become twenty-five. Therefore, after an initial settling in period where a long sentence might render you temporarily insane, most prisoners turned themselves off and, like recovering alcoholics, got through one day at a time.

  That’s what I did. I hadn’t killed anyone so I would be let go at the halfway point regardless and, amongst some of these men, I almost felt lucky. Imagine being sent to jail at twenty-five, knowing you would be sixty when you got out. Possibly due to a single moment of madness. It’s no wonder some chose the quick way out.

  I only had one visit whilst I was at HMP Wakefield; my brother. He came once as I asked him not to bother after that. It was a long drive for him and I was unsettled afterwards. Frank reminded me there was a world out there that I was missing out on.

  He tried to keep it low key and not say too much, yet I could picture him drinking ice cold beer in gardens or strolling out in the open. I pined for the normality of not having to share a home with so many men.

  It was good to see him too and he came with fantastic news. He and Silent Kevin had repaired my Porsche and sold it for £10,000. It wasn’t the money that was empowering this time, it was that Kevin had done something for me.

  I told Frank I would love it if Kevin visited. He said he would ask. He also let me know that he checked our family tree and we had numerous villains in our ancestry. That was not so encouraging.

  It was around this time that I kept dreaming about running. It wasn’t a nightmare whilst I slept, as I felt alive. It was the sinking horror on waking that made me feel entombed. As soon as my eyes closed, I could picture myself jogging on a beach. I would go faster and faster, leaving light footsteps in the sand. Instead of tiring, it was as if I was young and unbreakable. Almost like flying. The body in motion, alive and healthy. I would wake in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and my sheets tangled.

  Then, I slowly discovered that I was still locked in a small room. The heavy fetid air in the cell suppressed my breathing, but it was despair that crushed me.

  However, a tiny part of me rejoiced that, for at least some of the day, I had been free.

  Chapter 40

  2012 - Age: 46

  An unexpected feature of being incarcerated was that if they transferred you a long way from home, once a year, you could return to your local jail for accumulated visits. It was not unusual for inmates to have no one to come and see them if they were moved fifty miles away, never mind the two hundred I had gone. In that case, your visits built up and you 'went home' so you could stay in touch with family and friends.

  An officer explained it was all down to rehabilitation and re-offending. Inmates, and men in particular, would shut themselves off from anyone who knew them. When their release date arrived, they were all alone in the world. Sleeping rough and feeling neglected by society was a sure way to return to criminal ways, even if it was just stealing food. The best place for most after they leave is with their loved ones. Maintaining relationships is key.

  I booked both Silent Kevin and Frank in on the same visit. I didn’t know you could do that either until someone kindly explained. While Frank went to get the cakes, Kevin opened up.

  ‘I’m sorry, Vinnie.’

  ‘I’m not sure you have anything to feel bad for.’

  ‘That's not true. I wasn’t a good friend.’

  ‘I bet it was a lot to take in.’

  ‘It was. I was worried what people might say, you know, about sticking up for you, or even coming to visit. I thought they would think I was one too.’

  He didn’t need to say the word paedophile. Yet, its presence sat between us.

  ‘I didn’t do it, Kevin.’

  ‘You got eighteen years. I read the news. It was all over the papers.’

  ‘I was guilty of some things, stuff I shouldn’t have done, but I didn’t rape her or have sex with her.’

  As the words come out, I realised how hollow they sounded. Was this also a confession of sorts? My offender manager told me all those years ago that I would eventually want to confess - to everything.

  ‘Vinnie. You don’t need to try to explain. I can’t begin to understand what happened and nor do I want to. We all do awful things. I’ve made mistakes myself and I hope that my friends wouldn’t desert me, like I did you. You’ve been punished, let’s leave it at that.’

  I wondered whether he would have supported me back then, had I stuck to my story. Kevin’s character reference would certainly have bolstered my confidence, if not my chances. His unanswered letters and calls at the time weighed heavy on me. Each day with no reply was another shovel full of dirt on my chest.

  Frank returned and put down the drinks.

  ‘Look, they had decent looking cakes. Cheap too.’ He sensed the gloom. ‘You both all right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kevin said. ‘It’s just a shame they didn’t let me bring in my beers.’

  As we chuckled, that was the start of me thinking I could do my nine years. Maybe when I left, something of me would have persevered, and I’d have a place to return to. ‘Ride your bang-up,’ the young scrotes used to shout as their friends were dragged to the block after trying to distract each other from their pointless existences. I would ride my bang-up and perhaps I would survive.

  Each day blended into the next. I recognised others rotating around the country’s prison estate, like a tour of duty for the morally challenged. While these people wouldn’t become friends, it was nice to see a familiar face. Sometimes you’d chat, like you’d bumped into each other walking your dogs at the local park.

  A man on the last day of his sentence explained that I would still look forward to getting out. He had been in jail for nearly thirty years. I couldn’t help but ask him.

  ‘Did you do it?’

  ‘What they said? I suppose so. There are shades and perspectives but I was guilty. Who isn’t? A man told me not to get involved in the prison culture when I got here, and that saved me. That was good advice because it’s all fake. Go to the gym, get yourself fit, learn a trade or help others. Try to eat healthily and give something for nothing. Do those things and your future might be your own.’

  He regarded me like he must have done many men over such a long period.

  ‘You can’t change the past, only what lies ahead. On a lighter note, you know what's the craziest thing about this whole experience?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’m out tomorrow, Monday, at nine a.m. I will walk through those doors and within reason I can do what I want, after thirty years of being told what I can and can't do. Yet, all the time I’ve spent here has folded in on itself. It feels like I came here on Friday.’

  Chapter 41

  2013 – Age: 47

  Instead of going back to the Monster Mansion, they transferred me to the seaside. HMP
Albany, or HMP Isle of Wight as it’s now known. I couldn’t see the sea from my cell and the place still smelt how you’d expect, so the basics were the same. Some said the gulls drove them crazy, cawing away at memories of better times.

  The jail housed approximately 1,100 inmates who the Ministry of Justice described as being 'vulnerable sex offenders'. It was a strange world. At one point, I thought they were mixing male and female prisoners together before someone politely told me they were cross-dressers.

  There were two on our wing. Phoenix was ever-so-friendly and used to come into my cell to borrow things. She, as she asked me to call her, was a jittery being but remarkably like a girl.

  She was extremely popular. I never asked about her ‘friends’ but, judging by her make-up and constant supply of cigarettes, they were generous. She got a bit of grief from men calling her Tranny and She-male but she laughed it off good-heartedly. She said she liked being my friend because I didn't ask for anything.

  Phoenix used to tell the same joke over and over again. Q: ‘What’s the difference between a cross-dresser and a transsexual?’ A: ‘Two years.’ She was a force of nature as opposed to the other ‘lady’, Georgie, who was just a force; mass times acceleration.

  Georgie had the body, strength and demeanour of a recently-made-redundant coal miner. She scared me rigid, and the staff too. Maybe she did it to fuck with them, who knows, but it worked.

  I suspect she may not have been fully committed as she often lay on her bed watching sport and put garish lipstick and eye shadow on just for association. It’s quite a thing to watch a hairy eighteen stone man in full make-up slam pool balls down with a strength that made your ears ring.

  Only one man tried to bully Phoenix when I was there. The next morning, we all stood in our doorways and watched as Georgie left her cell and let herself into his. There wasn’t any noise, and I never did hear what happened but I have to say it was the quietest and safest wing that I’d ever been on. I was almost sad to leave when the time came.

  They got me a job in reception, talking to the new inmates about what they could expect from their custodial stay. I enjoyed it and found a sense of purpose I never had while I worked in the factory.

  Many were still in denial and kept asking about appeals and timescales. I hadn’t seen a single successful appeal apart from a few where the sentence was reduced. A few even had their sentences increased for wanton waste of the court’s time when there wasn’t any fresh evidence. It’s not surprising, I suppose, that there was no appetite amongst the judiciary to cast doubt on their fellows’ judgements.

  For most, the hardest part of prison is accepting that you have little control over your day. If you have a long sentence, and I saw many men at the wrong end of a time period that they would need decent health and good fortune to see out, the soundest advice was forget about your old life. Tough love for new arrivals. Not what they would want to hear, but wise.

  Unusually, prison is one of the only parts of society where the poor, the unloved and especially those who have nothing, get the better end of the deal. If you have spouses, children, ageing parents, or unattended businesses, prison is akin to being sent to hell.

  They assigned me a new Offender Manager. He was all business. He explained again that he couldn't downgrade my risk if I didn’t accept I was guilty of those distant crimes. Could it have been true? I didn’t remember much by then. In a quiet moment, he told me to play the game. When I queried this, he replied with a smile.

  ‘Just say you did those things and you are full of remorse. No one else need know. It’ll be your little secret. You may even end up in a nice D-Cat prison.’

  Hardly inspiring, hearing it from the staff. It may have made our meetings more fruitful and longer though. I’d heard other prisoners say similar things but the time for confessing was long past. A part of me wished I’d gone to trial and had my day in court. At least then, everything would have been out in the open.

  Even though I kept busy, I retained an undercurrent of restlessness. I, too, pined for my old life, despite my advice to others. I still carried round an unbalancing sensation of feeling I shouldn’t be inside. Maybe everyone felt like that. No one would come along now and tell me it was all a big mistake and I could go home. That point had disappeared years back.

  I remembered the old lady from The Hotel De Paris saying, ‘The years that matter are over quickly.’ She was right. I would be fifty-one when I got out. Was that too late? Although if I asked a sixty-year-old, he would no doubt tell me I was a young man and had the rest of my days ahead of me.

  I also had my first alcoholic drink for five years. An inmate called Pew asked me to read a letter he’d received from home. I followed him into his cell and sat on his bed. He must have easily been eighty years old. I smiled and waited as he got a folder out and shuffled through the letters, one by one.

  He was the type who kept his cell pristine. Every Saturday he would borrow the mop and brush and make a big show of it. He was nice enough, a little over-friendly but harmless, with an ill-fitting pair of false teeth.

  They moved of their own accord as he talked. Clicking and slurping. I found it very hard to focus on anything else whenever I spoke to him. It wasn’t only that they seemed to have a life of their own, it was just incongruous to be staring at perfectly formed teeth on such a wizened face. Still, he was good for a smoke if you ran out and I don’t think he cared whether you listened or not.

  ‘Here it is.’

  He passed me a yellowing envelope with a thick letter in it. He noticed me looking at the front where there was no stamp and it was addressed to Lenny Harris.

  ‘It was handed in for me, by the girlfriend.’

  A strange thought ran through me as I prayed to any God ever to have existed that there wouldn’t be any filth in it.

  ‘You sure? I don’t want to intrude on your privacy.’

  ‘I can’t read it myself, the writing’s too small. To be honest, I can barely see the TV nowadays. That’s why they call me Pew.’

  He paused as his words hit home.

  ‘Ah, I get it. The vicious, deadly, blind beggar from Treasure Island. Nice nickname.’

  Lenny laughed an unusual deep open-mouthed laugh and had to scramble around on the bed to stop his teeth falling out.

  ‘None of that sex talk in there, young man, if that’s what you’re worried about. If you want pictures, you’ll have to pay extra.’

  As we chuckled together, I realised it was moments like these, on an idle Sunday, which made jail endurable.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Erm, I’m okay, thanks.’

  I was dubious of old people’s consumables ever since May from next door experimented on us with her mouldy stuff. He must have been deaf as well as blind because he plonked a plastic cup full of orange juice in front of me. Inmates never refuse freebies and juice was something I didn't spend my own money on, so I picked it up with enthusiasm.

  ‘Steady with that, it’s got a lotta oompah loompa.’

  As it came towards my mouth, a stench of rotten corpses snaked up my nose like the branches from an evil tree. If zombies wore underwear that would be how it'd smell.

  I’d heard of hooch but seeing as I had never drunk much outside those walls, there seemed little point in imbibing while inside them. It must have been the British in me, as even though an entire lifetime’s worth of instinct told me not to, I took a sip. My eyes squinted and, despite my best efforts, closed.

  It hit my stomach in the same way I imagine drinking petrol would. The aftertaste was so foul when I spoke it made my front teeth protrude.

  ‘Nice.’ I managed.

  ‘Isn’t it? They say it’s my best yet. Now, read that letter. I miss my girl.’

  The contents were pretty standard but it went on and on. What she had for breakfast, what she liked on TV, who came to see her, what the weather was doing, a blow-by-blow account of her closest friend’s urinary infection that was enlightening and horrifying
in equal measure, and finally an entire page on whether she should cut down on caffeine or not. She chose not to.

  It was so mind-blowingly boring that I found myself sipping the foul liquid as I spoke. I was amazed it didn’t start to taste better as my brain furred up, but each new sip was a fresh crime.

  Lenny, or Pew, or whatever he was called, stared at me as I read in morbid fascination as though I were revealing the location of a lost treasure. He sipped water from a bottle when I'd almost got to the end and nodded, letting me know all was right with the world.

  ‘You not having any of your delicious beverage?’

  ‘What, that stuff? No, not for years. Gives me the shits. Real bad.’

  I’d finished the large cup twice during my reading. He’d kindly topped it up on the odd occasion too. My lower bowel shuddered as though a train had gone through it. I stood to leave and found I couldn’t stand straight. I needed to get back to my cell. Quickly.

  ‘It ends with, “See you in a few days, Sailor. I’ll be ready with some lovin’. Love Louisa".’

  As I peered down at him through watering vision, I noted the sides of his mouth drop.

  ‘You out soon?’ I managed as a growl came from my bowels that would have pleased a T Rex.

  ‘Yes, a few days.’ His eyes took on a far-off look.

  I didn’t have time for more pleasantries to find out why that wasn’t good news as platform two had an imminent arrival. It was coming fast and wouldn’t be stopping for passengers. The gurgle that came from near my sphincter would have caused concern on the Isle of Wight Ferry as it sounded like the plaintive distress call of a wounded whale.

  Lenny raised his eyes at me.