Jeffrey Archer - Purgatory

Chris is about my height but more stocky. He goes on talking at me, but I can understand only about one word in three. When he finally stops talking he settles down on the top bunk to read a letter from his mother while I begin to make up my bed on the bunk below. He chuckles and reads out a sentence from her letter: ‘If you don’t get this letter, let me know and I’ll send you another one.’ By the time we are let out to collect our supper I have discovered that he is serving a five-year sentence for GBH (grievous bodily harm), having stabbed his victim with a Stanley knife. This is Mr Thompson’s idea of someone who isn’t going to cause me any trouble.

6.00 pm

All meals are served at a hotplate, situated on the floor below. I wait patiently in a long queue only to discover that the food is every bit as bad as Belmarsh. I return to my cell empty-handed, grateful that canteen orders at Wayland are on a Friday (tomorrow). I extract a box of Sugar Puffs from my plastic bag and fill the bowl, adding long-life milk I munch a Belmarsh apple and silently thank Del Boy.

6.30 pm

Exercise: there are several differences between Belmarsh and Wayland that are immediately apparent when you walk out into the exercise yard. First, you are not searched, second, the distance you can cover without retracing your steps can be multiplied by five – about a quarter of a mile – third, the ratio of black to white prisoners is now 30/70 – compared to 70/30 at Belmarsh – and fourth, my arrival in Norfolk causes even more unsolicited pointing, sniggering and loutish remarks, which only force me to curtail my walk fifteen minutes early. I wish Mr Justice Potts could experience this for just one day.

On the first long circuit, the salesmen move in.

‘Anything you need, Jeff? Drugs, tobacco, phonecards?’

They’re all quite happy to receive payment on the outside by cheque or cash. I explain to them all firmly that I’m not interested, but it’s clearly going to take a few days before they realize I mean it.

When the barrow boys and second-hand salesmen have departed empty-handed, I’m joined by a lifer who tells me he’s also sixty-one, but the difference is that he’s already served twenty-seven years in prison and still doesn’t know when, if ever, he’ll be released. When I ask him what he’s in for, he admits to killing a policeman. I begin a conversation with a black man on the other side of me, and the lifer melts away.

Several of the more mature prisoners turn out to be in for ‘white collar’ crimes: fiddling the DSS, the DTI or HM Customs. One of them, David, joins me and immediately tells me that he’s serving five years.

‘What for?’ I ask.

‘Smuggling.’

‘Drugs?’

‘No, spirits,’ he confesses.

‘I didn’t realize that was against the law. I thought you could pop across to Calais and…’

‘Yeah, you can, but not sixty-five times in sixty-five days with a two-ton lorry, carrying twenty million quid’s worth of whisky.’ He pauses. ‘It’s when you forget to cough up eight million quid in duty that the Customs and Excise become a little upset.’

A young man in his late twenties takes the place of the police murderer on the other side of me. He brags that he’s been banged up in six jails during the past ten years, so if I need a Cook’s tour he’s the best-qualified operator.

‘Why have you been sent to six jails in ten years?’ I enquire.

‘No one wants me,’ he admits. ‘I’ve done over two thousand burglaries since the age of nineteen, and every time they let me out, I just start up again.’

Isn’t it time to give it up, and find something more worthwhile to do?’ I ask naively.

‘No chance’ he replies. ‘Not while I’m making over two hundred grand a year, Jeff.’

After a time, I become sick of the catcalling, so leave the exercise yard and return to my cell, more and more disillusioned, more and more cynical. I don’t consider young people, who are first offenders and have been charged with minor offences, should be sent to establishments like this, where one in three will end up on drugs, and one in three will commit a far more serious offence once they’ve received tuition from the prison professors.

The next humiliation I have to endure is prisoners queuing up silently outside my cell door to get a look at me. No ‘Hi, Jeff, how are you?’ Just staring and pointing, as if I’m some kind of an animal at the zoo. I sit in my cage, relieved when at eight o’clock an officer slams the doors closed.

8.00 pm

I’m just about to start writing up what has happened to me today when Chris switches on the television. First we have half an hour of EastEnders followed by Top Gear, and then a documentary on Robbie Williams. Chris is clearly establishing his right to leave the TV on, with a programme he has selected, at a volume that suits him. Will he allow me to watch Frasier tomorrow?

I lie in bed on my thin mattress, my head resting on a rock-hard pillow, and think about Mary and the boys, aware that they too must be enduring their own private hell. I feel as low as I did during my first night at Belmarsh. I have no idea what time I finally fall asleep. I thought I had escaped from hell.

So much for purgatory.

5.49 am

Intermittent, fitful sleep, unaided by a rock-hard pillow, a cellmate who snores and occasionally talks in his sleep; sadly, nothing of literary interest. Rise and write for two hours.

7.33 am

Cell-mate wakes and grunts. I carry on writing. He then jumps off the top bunk and goes to the lavatory in the corner of the cell. He has no inhibitions in front of me, but then he has been in prison for five years. I am determined never to go to the loo in my cell, while I’m still in a one-up, one-down, unless he is out I go on working as if nothing is happening. It’s quite hard to distract me when I’m writing, but when I look up I see Chris standing there in the nude. His chest is almost completely covered with a tattoo of an eagle towering over a snake, which he tells me with pride he did himself with a tattoo gun. On the knuckles of his fingers on both hands are diamonds, hearts, spades and clubs, while on his shoulders he has a massive spider’s web that creeps down his back. There’s not much pink flesh left unmarked. He’s a walking canvas.

8.00 am

The cell doors are unlocked so we can all go and have breakfast; one hour earlier than in Belmarsh. Chris and I walk down to the hotplate. At least the eggs have been boiled quite recently – like today. We’re also given a half carton of semi-skimmed milk, which means that I can drop the long-life version from my weekly shopping list and spend the extra 79p on some other luxury, like marmalade.

9.40 am

Mr Newport pops his head round the cell door to announce that Mr Tinkler, the principal officer, would like a word with me. Even the language at Wayland is more conciliatory. When I leave my cell, he adds, ‘It’s down the corridor, second door on the left’

When I enter Mr Tinkler’s room, he stands up and ushers me into a chair on the other side of his desk as if he were my bank manager. His name is printed in silver letters on a triangular piece of wood, in case anyone should forget. Mr Tinkler resembles an old sea captain rather than a prison officer. He has weathered, lined skin and a neatly cut white beard. He’s been in the service for over twenty years and I learn that he will be retiring next August. He asks me how I’m settling in – the most common question asked by an officer when meeting a prisoner for the first time. I tell him about the state of my room and the proclivities of my cell-mate. He listens attentively and, as there is little difference in our age, I detect some sympathy for my predicament. He tells me that as soon as my induction is over he plans to transfer me to a single cell on C block which houses mainly lifers. Mr Tinkler believes that I’ll find the atmosphere there more settled, as I will be among a group of prisoners closer to my own age. I leave his office feeling considerably better than when I entered it.