Stephen Fry - MOAB IS MY WASHPOT

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That was a bit silly of me, wasn’t it?’

‘Well frankly, Stephen, yes it was,’ said Even Nicer.

‘Stephen Fry was the name on three of the books in your suitcase, see.

‘But,’ said Nice, ‘knowing your name does make our lives easier and when our lives are easier, your life is easier.

I was on the register of missing children, having been placed there weeks before my eighteenth birthday so within minutes my parents had been telephoned. Within minutes of that I had myself a brief, as we lags call them. My godmother and her husband lived near Abingdon, and he was a lawyer. My parents acted swiftly.

The first night was spent in the police cells. I was in a fever of worry about seeing my parents in the magistrate’s court the next morning. I didn’t want to break down, I wanted to show them that I, and no one else, was taking responsibility for all this. I thought that if they heard through the police that I had refused all thought of bail, it might send them the signal that I was prepared to face my music alone. Nice and Even Nicer, once they began to get some picture of the full extent of my travels, told me that it might take a long time for my case to come to trial, for there was a great deal of paperwork to be gone through from several English counties. These things always took time.

The morning passed in such a rush that I barely remember anything about it, except that I was marched up from the cells, placed in a dock, a policeman beside me, and asked my name and age.

‘The question of bail?’ the magistrate asked.

‘Your honour, bail is not requested in this case,’ said my lawyer.

A look towards me from the magistrate as of a camel inspecting a blow-fly and a note was made.

There was muttering talk from the police solicitor concerning the collation of paperwork at which the magistrate grunted and placed me on remand to reappear in another two weeks, by which time the police solicitor should have framed a complete set of charges to which it would be possible for me to plead. Straight from the police court I was led, daring to look up just once to see if I could spot my parents in the gallery, into a van and towards prison.

They had been there. I had seen my mother’s anxious face, desperate to catch my eye and give me a warm smile. I had tried to smile back, but I had not known how. That old curse again. How to smile. If I smiled too broadly it might look like triumphalism; if I smiled too weakly it might look like a feeble bid for sympathy. If I smiled somewhere in between it would, I knew, look, as always, like plain smugness. Somehow I managed to bare my teeth in a manner that expressed, I hope, sorrow, gratitude, determination, shame, remorse and resolve.

There again, why should I have to design a smile or an expression? If I felt all those things, which I did, why should I have to act them? Did normal people question their smiles and looks, did they go into lathers of insecurity about the impressions they gave, the figures they cut? If I truly cared about what people thought, surely I would alter not my reactions, but my actions. I would change my behaviour, not the nuance of my smiles. Or did I think that style was parent, not the child of substance? And was I right, deep down, ultimately right, to think so?

The van, in which I was the only prisoner, sped along the motorway until we crossed the border into the brand-new county of Avon, passing by the Chippings – Chipping Norton, Chipping Hamden and Chipping Sodbury. Hadn’t there been a boy called Meade at Stouts Hill who lived at Chipping Sodbury? A dim memory returned to me of us all once crowding round Meade and teasing him about his buck-teeth and of him fighting back with the gloriously pre-war riposte, ‘You’re rotters, all of you. Nothing but utter rotters!’ I had immediately taken his side because ‘utter rotter’ was a phrase my mother used – still uses to this day on those rare occasions when she is moved to disapproval – and this made me feel that Meade must be a good thing. Strange the ways in which loyalty to one’s parents can show itself: never when they are there and when they would cut off a finger to see the tiniest scrap of evidence of filial devotion, but always when they are miles away. I visited a boy’s parents one Sunday for tea when I was eight or nine and saw that they used Domestos in their lavatory, not Harpic which we used at home and I remember thinking poorly of these people because of it. We were Vim, Persil Fairy Liquid and RAG, other families were Ajax, Omo, Sqweezee and AA and one pitied them and felt slightly repelled: didn’t they realise they had got it all wrong? Fierce pride in one s parents’ choice of bathroom scourers, withering contempt for their opinions on anything concerning life, the world and oneself.

The van stopped at a large set of gates.

'What’s this place called?’ I asked the policeman cuffed to me.

‘Didn’t they tell you, son? It’s called Pucklechurch.’

‘Pucklechurch?’ I said.

‘Ah. Pucklechurch.’

‘But that’s so friendly! It sounds so sweet.’

‘Well, lad,’ said the policeman, getting to his feet. ‘I don’t think that’s precisely the idea.’

Pucklechurch was a prison for young offenders on remand. I think all the inmates were between sixteen and twenty-five, and either awaiting sentencing or allocation to major prisons.

You will find that there are two states of being when you are placed on remand. Con and Non Con. A non con is technically innocent of any crime: he is confined because bail has been denied him or because he cannot afford it. He has either pleaded not guilty or else, as in my case, he has not yet had a chance to plead: either way, the law regards him as guiltless until proven otherwise. The cons, however, the cons have pleaded guilty and await their trial and sentencing.

Non cons wore brown uniforms, could receive as many visitors a day as they pleased, have as much food brought in as they could eat and were not obliged to work. They could spend their own money, watch television and enjoy themselves.

For the first two weeks, that then, is more or less what I did. I settled down in B wing, very happily, with a cell to myself. The only moment of pity and terror came when my parents visited on the third day.

I pictured them trying to decide which day might be best for a visit. Not the very first day because I would still be finding my feet. The second day too, that might still look too quick and swoopy. The fourth day would perhaps give the impression of indifference. They wanted to show that they cared and that they loved me: the third day was the best day.

You have all seen prison visiting rooms on television or in the cinema. You can picture the distress of parents, sitting on one side of a glass cage and watching their son being led forwards in prison uniform. We did our best. They smiled, they gave straight-lipped nods of firm encouragement. There was no questioning, no recrimination, no overflow of emotion.

The moment that tried me the most sorely came when, as the interview drew to a close, my mother took from her handbag a fat wadge of crosswords neatly clipped from the back page of The Times. She had saved the crossword every day since I had been away, removing the answers from the previous day’s puzzle with completely straight, careful scissor strokes. When she pushed them under the window and I saw what they were I made a choking noise and closed my eyes. I tried to smile and I tried not to breathe in, because I knew that if I breathed in the choke would turn into a series of huge heaving sobs that might never end.

There was more love in every straightly snipped cut than one might think was contained in the whole race of man.