Jeffrey Archer: The Sins of the Father

Harry heard the door slam behind him. He looked around the cell, and noticed there was no handle on the inside of the door. Two bunks, one on top of the other, a steel wash basin attached to the wall, a wooden table, also attached to the wall, and a wooden chair. His eyes finally settled on a steel bowl under the lower bunk. He thought he was going to be sick.

‘You get the top bunk,’ said Quinn, interrupting his thoughts, ‘on account of you being a first-timer. If I get out before you, you’ll move down to the bottom one, and your new cellmate will get the top. Prison etiquette,’ he explained.

Harry stood on the bottom bunk and slowly made up his bed, then climbed up, lay down and placed his head on the thin, hard pillow, painfully aware that it might be some time before he managed a night’s sleep. ‘Can I ask you one more question?’ he said to Quinn.

‘Yes, but don’t speak again until lights on tomorrow morning.’ Harry recalled Fisher saying almost the same words on his first night at St Bede’s.

‘It’s obvious you’ve been able to smuggle in a considerable amount of cash, so why didn’t the guards confiscate it as soon as you got off the bus?’

‘Because if they did,’ said Quinn, ‘no con would ever bring in any money again, and the whole system would break down.’

HARRY LAY ON the top bunk and stared at the one-coated white ceiling that he could touch by reaching up with his fingers. The mattress was lumpy and the pillow so hard that he could only manage to sleep for a few minutes at a time.

His thoughts turned to Sefton Jelks and how easily he had been duped by the old advocate. Get my son off the murder charge, that’s all I care about, he could hear Tom Bradshaw’s father telling Jelks. Harry tried not to think about the next six years, which Mr Bradshaw didn’t care about. Had it been worth $10,000?

He dismissed his lawyer and thought about Emma. He missed her so much, and wanted to write and tell her he was still alive, but he knew he couldn’t. He wondered what she would be doing on an autumn day in Oxford. How was her work progressing as she began her freshman year? Was she being courted by another man?

And what of her brother, Giles, his closest friend? Now that Britain was at war, had Giles left Oxford and signed up to fight the Germans? If he had, Harry prayed that he was still alive. He thumped the side of the bunk with a clenched fist, angry that he was not being allowed to play his part. Quinn didn’t speak, assuming that Harry was suffering ‘first-night-itis’.

And what of Hugo Barrington? Had anyone seen him since he disappeared on the day Harry should have married his daughter? Would he find a way of creeping back into favour, when everyone believed Harry was dead? He dismissed Barrington from his mind, still unwilling to accept the possibility that the man might be his father.

When his thoughts turned to his mother, Harry smiled, hoping that she would make good use of the $10,000 Jelks had promised to send her once he’d agreed to take the place of Tom Bradshaw. With over £2,000 in the bank, Harry hoped she would give up her job as a waitress at the Grand Hotel and buy that little house in the country she’d always talked about; that was the only good thing that would come out of this whole charade.

And what of Sir Walter Barrington, who had always treated him like a grandchild? If Hugo was Harry’s father, then Sir Walter was his grandfather. If that turned out to be the case, Harry would be in line to inherit the Barrington estate and the family title, and would in time become Sir Harry Barrington. But not only did Harry want his friend Giles, Hugo Barrington’s legitimate son, to inherit the title, even more important, he was desperate to prove that his real father was Arthur Clifton. That would still give him an outside chance of being able to marry his beloved Emma. Harry tried to forget where he’d be spending the next six years.

At seven o’clock a siren sounded to wake those prisoners who had served long enough to enjoy a night’s sleep. You’re not in prison when you’re asleep, were the last words Quinn had muttered before falling into a deep slumber, then snoring. It didn’t bother Harry. As a snorer, his uncle Stan was in a different class.

Harry had made up his mind about several things during his long, sleepless night. To help pass the numbing cruelty of wasted time, ‘Tom’ would be a model prisoner, in the hope that his sentence would be reduced for good behaviour. He would get a job in the library, and write a diary about what had happened before he was sentenced, and everything that took place while he was behind bars. He would keep himself fit, so that if war was still raging in Europe, he would be ready to sign up the moment he was released.

Quinn was already dressed by the time Harry climbed down from the top bunk.

‘What now?’ asked Harry, sounding like a new boy on his first day of term.

‘Breakfast,’ said Quinn. ‘Get dressed, grab your plate and mug, and make sure you’re ready when the screw unlocks the door. If you’re a few seconds late, some officers get a kick out of slamming the door in your face.’ Harry began to pull on his trousers. ‘And don’t talk on your way down to the canteen,’ added Quinn. ‘It draws attention to yourself, which annoys the old-timers. In fact, don’t talk to anyone you don’t know until your second year.’

Harry would have laughed, but he wasn’t sure if Quinn was joking. He heard a key turning in the lock, and the cell door swung open. Quinn shot through like a greyhound out of the slips, with his cellmate only a stride behind. They joined a long line of silent prisoners who were making their way across the landing past the open doors of empty cells, before walking down a spiral staircase to the ground floor, where they would join their fellow inmates for breakfast.

The line came to a halt long before they reached the canteen. Harry watched the servers in their short white coats, standing behind the hotplate. A guard carrying a truncheon and wearing a long white coat was keeping an eye on them, making sure no one got an extra portion.

‘How nice to see you again, Mr Siddell,’ Pat said quietly to the guard once they reached the front of the queue. The two men shook hands as if they were old friends. This time Harry couldn’t see any money changing hands, but a curt nod from Mr Siddell indicated that a deal had been struck.

Quinn moved along the line as his tin plate was filled with a fried egg with a solid yolk, a pile of potatoes more black than white and the regulation two slices of stale bread. Harry caught up with him as he was having his mug half filled with coffee. The servers looked puzzled when Harry thanked them one by one, as if he were a guest at a vicarage tea party.

‘Damn,’ he said when the last server offered him coffee. ‘I left my mug in the cell.’

The server filled Quinn’s mug to the brim. ‘Don’t forget next time,’ said Harry’s cellmate.

‘No talking in line!’ yelled Hessler, slamming his truncheon into a gloved hand. Quinn led Harry to the end of a long table and sat on the bench opposite him. Harry was so hungry he devoured every morsel on his plate, including the greasiest egg he’d ever tasted. He even considered licking his plate, and then he recalled his friend Giles, on another first day.

When Harry and Pat had finished their five-minute breakfast, they were marched back up the spiral staircase to the top floor. Once their cell door had been slammed shut, Quinn washed his plate and mug, and placed them neatly under his bunk.

‘When you live in an eight by four for years on end, you make use of every inch of space,’ he explained. Harry followed his lead, and could only wonder how long it would be before he was able to teach Quinn something.