As each day passes, I tell myself that the stories will dry up and this diary with it. Well, not today, because Simon has just walked into SMU.
Simon works in the officers’ mess, and although I see him every day I have not yet made his acquaintance. He’s visiting SMU to check on an application he submitted to visit his mother in Doncaster. He has, I fear, been dealing with an officer ironically known as ‘action man’. After six weeks and several ‘apps’, Simon has still heard nothing. After I’ve promised to follow this up, I casually ask him why he’s in prison.
‘I abducted my son,’ he replies.
I perk up. I’ve not come across an abduction before.
Simon pleaded guilty to abducting (‘rescuing’ in his words) his five-year-old son for forty-seven days. He whisked him off to Cyprus, via France, Germany, Yugoslavia and Turkey. He did so, he explains, because after he’d left his wife, he discovered that his son was being physically abused by both his ex-wife and her new partner, a police detective sergeant. The judge didn’t believe his story, and sentenced him to four years, as a warning to other fathers not to take the law into their own hands. Fair enough, and indeed I found myself nodding.
A year later, his wife’s new partner (the detective sergeant) was arrested and charged with ABH (actual bodily harm), and received a three-year sentence for, among other things, breaking the little boy’s arm. Simon immediately appealed and returned to court to face the same judge. He pleaded not only extenuating circumstances, but added ‘I told you so’, to which the judge replied, ‘It doesn’t alter the fact that you broke the law, so you will complete your sentence.’
Ah, I hear you say, but he could have reported the man to the police and the social services. You try reporting a detective sergeant to the police. And Simon has files stacked up in his room filled with dozens of complaints to the social services with replies bordering on the ludicrous, ‘We have looked into the matter very carefully and have no reason to believe …’ Simon had to sell his home to pay the £70,000 legal bills, and is now incarcerated in NSC, penniless, and with no knowledge of where his only child is. My heart goes out to this man.
Would you have done the same thing for your child? If the answer is yes, then you’re a criminal.
11.00 am
A call for me over the tannoy to report to reception. Sergeant Major Daff is on duty. He is happy to release my drug-free radio. It’s a Sony three-band, sensible, plain and workmanlike. It will do the job and one only needs to look at the sturdy object to know it’s been sent by Mary.
2.30 pm
A quiet afternoon, so Matthew gives me a lecture on Herodotus. He is rather pleased with himself, because he’s come across a passage in book four of the Histories that could be the first known reference to sniffing cannabis (hemp). I reproduce the translation in full:
And now for the vapour-bath. On a framework made up of three sticks, meeting at the top, they stretch pieces of woollen cloth, taking care to get the jams as perfect as they can, and inside this little tent, they place a dish with red-hot stones on it. They then take some hemp seed, enter the tent and throw the seed onto the hot stones. It immediately begins to smoke, giving off a vapour unsurpassed by any vapour bath one could find in Greece. The Scythians enjoy the experience so much that they howl with pleasure.
3.40 pm
Mr New and Mr Simpson interview me for my sentence plan. All the boxes are filled in with ‘No History’ (N/H) for drugs, violence, past offences, drink or mental disorder. In the remaining boxes, the words ‘Low Risk’ are entered for abscond, reoffend and bullying. The final box has to be filled in by my personnel officer. Mr New is kind enough to commend my efforts at SMU and my relationship with other prisoners.
The document is then signed by both officers and faxed to Spring Hill at 4.07 pm, and is acknowledged as received at 4.09 pm. Watch this space.
DAY 118
TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2001
5.51 am
Write for two hours.
8.30 am
There are no new inductees today and therefore no labour board. Mr New will not be on duty until one o’clock, so Matthew and I have a quiet morning. He gives me a lecture on Alexander the Great.
12 noon
I phone Chris Beetles at his gallery. His annual Illustrators’ Catalogue has arrived in the morning post. There is the usual selection of goodies: Vickie, Low, Brabazon, Scarfe, Shepard, Giles and Heath Robinson. However, it’s a new artist who attracts my attention.
The first edition of The Wind in the Willows was illustrated by E. H. Shepard, and after his death for a short time by Heath Robinson. But a new version has recently been published, illustrated with the most delightful watercolours by Michael Foreman, who is one of Britain’s most respected illustrators. Original Shepards are now changing hands for as much as £100,000 and Heath Robinsons can fetch £10,000. So it was a pleasant surprise to find that Mr Foreman’s works were around £500. I decide to select one or two for any future grandchildren.
So in anticipation I turn the pages and begin to choose a dozen or so for Mary to consider. I have to smile when I come to page 111: a picture of Toad in jail, being visited by the washerwoman. This is not only a must for a future grandchild, but should surely be this year’s Christmas card. (See below.)
4.00 pm
An inmate called Fox asks me if it’s true that I have a laptop in my room. I explain politely to him that I write all my manuscripts by hand, and have no idea how to use a computer. He looks surprised. I later learn from my old room-mate Eamon that there’s a rumour going round that I have my own laptop and a mobile phone. Envy in prison is every bit as rife as it is ‘on the out’.
5.00 pm
I receive a visit from David (fraud, eighteen months). He has received a long and fascinating letter from his former pad-mate Alan, who was transferred to Spring Hill a week ago. Alan confirms that his new abode is far more pleasant than NSC, and advises me to join him as quickly as possible. He doesn’t seem to realize that the decision won’t rest with me. However, there is one revealing sentence: ‘An officer reported that they’ve been expecting Jeffrey for the past week, has he decided not to come?’ David feels that they must have agreed to take me, and are only waiting for my sentence plan, which was faxed to them yesterday.
Incidentally, David (the recipient of the letter) was a schoolmaster in Sleaford before he arrived at NSC via Belmarsh. Three of his former pupils are also residents; well, to be totally accurate, two — one has just absconded.
7.00 pm
Doug and I watch the tanks as they roll into Kabul while Bush and Blair try not to look triumphant.
10.30 pm
I’m back in my room, undressing, when a flash bulb goes off.8 I quickly open my door and see an inmate running down the corridor. I chase after him, but he disappears out of the back door and into the night.
I return to my room, and a few moments later, an officer knocks on the door and lets himself in. He tells me that they know who it is, as several prisoners saw the culprit departing. So everyone will know it was by this time tomorrow; yet another inmate who has been bribed by the press. The last three have been caught, lost their D-cat status, been shipped back to a B-cat and had time added to their sentence. I’m told the going rate for a photograph is £500. If they catch him, I’ll let you know. If they don’t, you’ll have seen it in one of the national papers, captioned: ‘EXCLUSIVE: Archer undressing in his cell’.
DAY 119
WEDNESDAY 14 NOVEMBER 2001
8.15 am
As I walk over to breakfast from the south block, I pick up snippets of information about last night’s incident. It turns out that the photographer was not a prisoner, but Wilkins, a former inmate who was released last Friday. He was recognized by several inmates, all of whom were puzzled as to what he was doing back inside the prison four days after he’d been released.
But here is the tragic aspect of the whole episode. Wilkins was in prison for driving without a lic
ence, and served only twelve weeks of a six-month sentence. The penalty for entering a prison for illegal purposes carries a maximum sentence of ten years, or that’s what it proclaims on the board in black and white as you enter NSC. And worse, you spend the entire term locked up in a B-cat, as you would be considered a high-escape risk. The last such charge at NSC was when a father brought in drugs for his son. He ended up with a three-year sentence.
I look forward to discovering which paper considers this behaviour a service to the public. I’m told that when they catch Wilkins, part of the bargaining over sentence will be if he is willing to inform the police who put him up to it.
2.30 pm
There’s a call over the intercom for all officers to report to the gatehouse immediately. Matthew and I watch through the kitchen window as a dozen officers arrive at different speeds from every direction. They surround a television crew who, I later learn, are bizarrely trying to film a look-alike Jeffrey Archer holding up one of my books and claiming he’s trying to escape. Mr New tells me he warned them that they were on government property and must leave immediately, to which the producer replied, ‘You can’t treat me like that, I’m with the BBC.’ Can the BBC really have sunk to this level?
DAY 120
THURSDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2001
5.21 am
I’m up early because I have to report to the hospital by 7.30 am to take over my new responsibilities as Doug’s stand-in, while he goes off on a three-day forklift truck-driving course. How this will help a man of fifty-three who runs his own haulage company with a two million pound turnover is beyond me. He doesn’t seem to care about the irrelevance of it all, as long as he gets out of prison for three days.
I write for two hours.
7.30 am
I report to Linda at the hospital, and witness the morning sick parade. A score of prisoners are lined up to collect their medication, or to see if they can get off work for the day. If it’s raining or freezing cold, the length of the queue doubles. Most farm workers would rather spend the day in the warm watching TV than picking Brussels sprouts or cleaning out the pigsties. Linda describes them as malingerers, and claims she can spot them at thirty paces. If I worked on the farm I might well join them.
Bill (fraud, farm worker) has had every disease, affliction and germ that’s known to man. Today he’s got diarrhoea and asks Linda for the day off work. He feels sure he’ll be fine by tomorrow.
‘Certainly,’ says Linda, giving him her warmest smile. Bill smiles back in response. ‘But,’ she adds, ‘I’m going to have to put you in the san [sanatorium] for the day.’
‘Why?’ asks Bill, looking surprised.
‘I’ll need to take a sample every thirty minutes,’ she explains, ‘before I can decide what medication to prescribe.’ Bill reluctantly goes into the hospital, lies on one of the beds and looks hopefully in the direction of the television screen. ‘Not a chance,’ Linda tells him.
Once Linda has sorted out the genuinely ill from the trying-it-on brigade, I’m handed four lists of those she has sanctioned to be off work for the day. I deliver a copy to the south block unit office, the farm office, the north block, the gatehouse amd education before going to breakfast.
8.30 am
It’s Matthew’s last day at NSC and he’s on the paper chase. He takes a double-sided printed form from department to department, the hospital, gym, canteen, stores and reception, to gather signatures authorizing his release tomorrow. He starts with Mr Simpson, the probation officer at SMU, and will end with the principal officer Mr New. He will then have to hand in this sheet of paper at reception tomorrow morning before he can finally be released. It’s not unknown for a prisoner’s release paper to disappear overnight, which can hold up an inmate’s departure for several hours.
I’ll miss Matthew, who, at the age of twenty-four, will be returning to university to complete his PhD. He’s taught me a great deal during the past five weeks. I’ve met over a thousand prisoners since I’ve been in jail, and he is one of a handful who I believe should never have been sent to prison. I wish him luck in the future; he’s a fine young man.
12 noon
I drop into the hospital to see if sister needs me.
‘Not at the moment,’ says Linda, ‘but as we’re expecting seventeen new arrivals this afternoon, please come back around four, or when you see the sweat box driving through the front gate.’
‘How’s Bill?’ I enquire.
‘He lasted about forty minutes,’ she replies dryly, ‘but sadly failed to produce a specimen. I sent him back to the farm, but of course told him to return immediately should the problem arise again.’
2.00 pm
On returning to SMU I find a prisoner sitting in the waiting room, visibly shaking. His name is Moore. He tells me that he’s been called off work for a meeting with two police officers who are travelling down from Derbyshire to interview him. He’s completed seventeen months of a five-year sentence, and is anxious to know why they want to see him.
2.30 pm
The police haven’t turned up. I go to check on Moore — to find he’s a gibbering wreck.
2.53 pm
The two Derbyshire police officers arrive. They greet me with a smile and don’t look at all ferocious. I take them up to an interview room on the first floor and offer them a cup of tea, using the opportunity to tell them that Moore is in a bit of a state. They assure me that it’s only a routine enquiry, and he has nothing to be anxious about. I return downstairs and pass on this message; the shaking stops.
3.26 pm
Moore departs with a smile and a wave; I’ve never seen a more relieved man.
4.00 pm
The seventeen new prisoners arrive in a sweat box via Birmingham and Nottingham. I report to the hospital to check their blood pressure and note their weight and height. It’s not easy to carry out my new responsibilities while all seventeen of them talk at once. What jobs are there? How much are you paid? Can I go to the canteen tonight? What time are roll-calls? Which is the best block? Can I make a phone call?
7.00 pm
Doug returns from his day on the fork-lift trucks. He’s pleased to be doing the course because if he hopes to retain his HGV licence, he would still have to take it in a year’s time. The course is costing him £340 but he’d be willing to pay that just to be allowed out for three days; ‘In fact, I’d pay a lot more,’ he says.
8.15 pm
After roll-call I take a bath before going over to the south block to say goodbye to Matthew. By the time I check in at the hospital at 7.30 am tomorrow morning he will be a free man. I do not envy him, because he should never have been sent to prison in the first place.
DAY 121
FRIDAY 16 NOVEMBER 2001
10.00 am
All seventeen new inmates are waiting in the conservatory for their introductory talk before they sign the pledge (on drugs). They’re all chatting away, with one exception; he’s sitting in the corner, head bowed, foot tapping, looking anxious. This could be for any number of reasons, but even though the officers keep a suicide watch during the first forty-eight hours of a prisoner’s arrival, I still report my anxieties to Mr New. He tells me to bring the prisoner into his office but make it look routine.
When the man emerges forty minutes later, he is smiling. It turns out that X is a schedule A conviction, which usually means a sexual offence against a minor. However, X was sentenced to six months for lashing out at his son. He’ll only serve twelve weeks, and the fact that he’s in a D-cat prison shows there is no previous history of violence. However, if word got out that he’s schedule A, other inmates would assume he’s a paedophile. Mr New has advised the prisoner to say, if asked what he’s in for, that he took a swipe at a guy who tried to jump a taxi queue. As he’s only serving twelve weeks, it’s just believable.
11.30 am
Storr marches into the building, waving a complaint form. Yesterday, after returning from a town visit, he failed a breathalyser test; yes, yo
u can be breathalysed in prison without having driven — in fact walking is quite enough. Storr protested that he never drinks even ‘on the out’ and the real culprit is a bottle of mouthwash. Storr is sent back to the north block to retrieve the offending bottle, which has about an inch of red liquid left in the bottom. The label lists alcohol as one of several ingredients. After some discussion, Mr New decides Storr will be retested tomorrow morning. If the test proves negative, his explanation will be accepted.9 He will then be subjected to regular random tests, and should one of them prove positive, he will be shipped back to his C-cat. Storr accepts this judgment, and leaves looking pleased with himself.
2.30 pm
I ask Mr New if there is any progress on my transfer to Spring Hill. He shakes his head.
4.00 pm
I report back to the hospital and carry out three more urine tests on the inductees we didn’t get round to yesterday, measure their blood pressure and record their weight. Among them is a prisoner called Blossom, who is returning to NSC for the third time in as many years.