Jeffrey Archer - Purgatory

‘I was only joking,’ I say, and wish him luck.

5.00 pm

Supper. I settle for a lump of cabbage and half a portion of chips, which is a normal portion in your world. The cabbage is floating around in water and reminds me of school meals, and why I never liked the vegetable in the first place. While I’m waiting in line, Jimmy tells me that he didn’t enjoy his spell of serving behind the hotplate.

‘Why not?’ I ask.

The inmates never stop complaining,’ he adds.

‘About the quality of the food?’

‘No, about not giving them large enough portions, especially when it comes to chips.’

When I return to the cell, I find over a hundred letters stacked on the end of my bunk. Jules reminds me that at weekends we’re banged up at around five thirty and will remain locked in our cells until eight fifteen the following morning. So I’ll certainly have enough time to read every one of them. Fourteen hours of incarceration, once again blamed on staff shortages. Unpleasant, but still a great improvement on Belmarsh. I say unpleasant only because when you’ve finished your meal, you’re left with dirty, smelly plastic plates littering your tiny cell all night. It might be more sensible to leave the cell doors open for another twenty minutes so that prisoners can scrape the remains of their food into the dustbins at the end of each corridor and then wash their utensils in the sink. And don’t forget that in many prisons there are three inmates to a cell with one lavatory.

I compromise, scrape my food into a plastic bag and then tie it up before dropping it in the waste-paper bin next to the lavatory. When I look out of my cell window I notice several prisoners are throwing the remains of their meal through the bars and out onto the grass.

Jules tells me that he’s working on a letter to the principal officer (Mr Tinkler) about having his status changed from C-cat to D-cat. He asks if I will go through it with him. I don’t tell him that I’m facing the same problem.

Jules is a model prisoner and deserves his enhanced status. He gained this while he was at Bedford where he became a listener. He’s also quiet and considerate about my writing regime. He so obviously regrets his involvement with drugs, and is one of the few prisoners I’ve come across who I am convinced will never see the inside of a jail again. I do a small editorial job on his letter and suggest that we should go over the final draft tomorrow. I then spend the next couple of hours reading through today’s mail, which is just as supportive as the letters I received in Belmarsh. There is, however, one missive of a different nature that I feel I ought to share with you.

University College Hospital London

1/8/01 4.30 pm

My dear Lord Archer

Many poets and writers have written much of their best work in prison, OWfor one. However, I cannot conceive of you having to spend four miserable years in a maximum security prison. I spent 60 days in such a facility in Canada on a trumped-up charge of disturbing the peace. I escaped by a most devious means.

I can arrange for your immediate release from bondage, however, only if you are willing to donate PS15m to my charity foundation.

I can be contacted anytime at 020 7- If you would like some company, choose three non-criminal or white-collar offenders to join with you,foran appropriate amount.

Yours as an artist,

I am quite unable to read the signature. In the second post there is another letter in the same bold red hand:

1/8/01 5.05 pm

Dear Geofrey [sic]

After having sealed my letter to you I realized that I wrote PS15m instead of PS1.5m So just to reassure you, I’m not an idiot, I repeat my offer to spring you and a few other trustworthy buddies!

Yours in every greater art,

Again, I cannot read the signature.

5.56 am

Woken by voices in the corridor, two officers, one of them on a walkie-talkie. They open a cell door and take a prisoner away. I will find out the details when my door is unlocked in a couple of hours’ time.

6.05 am

Write for two hours.

8.15 am

Breakfast. Sugar Puffs (prison issue), long-life milk (mine, because it’s Sunday). Beans on burnt toast (prison’s).

10.00 am

I go to the library for the first time and sign up. You are allowed to take out two books, a third if your official work is education. The library is about the same size as the weight-lifting room and, to be fair, just as well stocked. They have everything from Graham Greene to Stephen King, I, Claudius to Harry Potter.

However, although Forsyth, Grisham, Follett and Jilly Cooper are much in evidence, I can find none of my books on the shelves. I hope that’s because they are all out on loan. Lifers often tell me they’ve read them all – slowly – and in some cases several times.

I take out a copy of The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse, which I haven’t read in years, and Famous Trials selected by John Mortimer. Naturally I have to fill in another form, and then my choices are stamped by the library orderly – a prisoner – to be returned by 26 August. I’m rather hoping to have moved on by then.

Kevin, the prisoner who stamps my library card, tells me that all my books were removed from the shelves the day they found out I was being transferred to Wayland.

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘Direct order from the number one governor. It seems that Belmarsh informed her that the prisoners were stealing your books, and if they could then get you to Sign them, the black-market price is a thousand pounds.’

I believe everything except the thousand pounds, which sounds like a tabloid figure.

10.30 am

I check my watch, leave the library and quickly make my way across to the chapel on the other side of the corridor. There is no officer standing by the entrance. It suddenly hits me that I haven’t been searched since the day I arrived. I’m a couple of minutes late, and wonder if I’ve come to the wrong place, as there are only three other prisoners sitting in the pews, along with the chaplain. John Framlington is dressed in a long, black gown and black cape with crimson piping, and welcomes me with literally open arms.

The chapel is very impressive, with its wood-panelled walls and small oils depicting the life of Christ. The simple altar is covered in a cloth displaying a white cross with splashes of gold. There is also a large wooden cross hanging from the wall behind the altar. The seating consists of six rows of twenty wooden chairs set in a semicircle reminiscent of a small amphitheatre. I take a seat in the third row as a group of men and women all dressed in red T-shirts enters by the backdoor. They assemble their music on stands while a couple strap on guitars and a flautist practises a few notes. She’s very pretty. I wonder if it’s because it’s my twenty-fifth day in prison. But that would be an ungallant thought. She is pretty.

By ten forty-five the congregation has swelled to seven, but we are still outnumbered by the nine-strong choir. The prisoners are all seated to the right of the altar while the choir is standing on the left. A man, who appears to be the group’s leader, suggests we move across and join him on their side of the chapel. All seven of us dutifully obey. I’ve just worked out why the congregation at Belmarsh was over two hundred, week in and week out, while at Wayland it’s down to seven. Here you are allowed to stroll around the buildings for long periods of time, so if you wish to make contact with someone from another wing, it’s not all that difficult. In Belmarsh, chapel was a rare opportunity to catch up with a friend from another block, relay messages, pass on drugs and occasionally even pray.