Veronica's Bird

by Veronica Bird

This church caused me to reflect on life when two women with their children arrived one day for a service. Before the arrival of the vicar, they began to point out various features of the interior as if they knew the place, though we had never seen them here before. Intrigued, I went over to them after the service and asked them if the prisoners had behaved themselves even though I knew the women had every right to be there.

  ‘You seem to know the church very well?’ I enquired.

  They told me they had both been orphans in what had been the orphanage before it was turned into Styal prison. They had been there at the time when the British Government had connived with the Australian Government to take ten thousand children in what became a shameful episode in British and Australian histories. Both countries had agreed to send thousands of children who were orphans, illegitimate or just too poor for their parents to hold on to them. They were ‘exported’ over a period of twenty years from nineteen forty-seven. It took until nineteen ninety-eight for the House of Commons to recognise ‘Britain’s shameful secret,’ causing the practice to come to an embarrassing international halt.

  But, for these two women, it was a joyful day. They spoke very highly of the Orphanage Superintendent who had brought care and sensitivity to his role. The women could even recite the words over the altar, suffer little children to come unto to me. Apt words, particularly suffer, when you knew what so many of the children had had to go through when they arrived in Australia., for they had often been beaten and half-starved as they were forced to build their own housing to live in. Many were only eight or nine years old.

  With all this walking around in the fresh air, it is easy to forget there were negatives. Moving to Styal meant my pay grade had improved by two leaps which made me pretty pleased until I realised there was to be no overtime. So, my take home pay was actually lower. Having this in-built paranoia to save, I found there was now much more need to be careful in what I spent my money on. My accommodation too, came under scrutiny. It was a prison service quarters which the Governor and the Chief Officer saw fit to inspect from time to time. It was an unpleasant sensation that, despite knowing one’s room was neat and tidy one was aware also of the Governor’s fingers which might have been sneaking their way through one’s most personal possessions.

  In those days, I had long hair, in fashion, I suppose, but there came a time when I decided short was good, long was out. I ended up at the hair-dresser with my long hair on the ground and a breeziness around my ears. I had always kept my hair up tidily under my tricorne hat so when I was wearing it there was very little difference in my looks; or so I thought.

  The world exploded when the Governor, possibly a foot taller than me, walked past not recognising me. I assume she had thought I was a new intake who had not been introduced and surprised when the recruit answered her with such a familiar, ‘Morning ma’am.’

  The governor eventually recognised me and screamed out in front of her staff. ‘How dare you! How dare you! How dare you have your hair cut without first applying to me for permission!’

  I kept quite quiet. You do not argue with an angry woman, at least, not in those days. The Governor was close to God after all, as was the Chief Officer. On second thoughts, God was just below Governor level. The Chief Officer therefore, sitteth on her right side.

  Months went by. I had been in the prison service for five years. I was advancing. I knew I could hold down any job I was asked to do yet, not once did I receive a note or a letter from my father or family. To them, I had disappeared off the face of the earth. Fred, I learned, was still in the fruit and veg. business, their three girls growing up fast and not needing so much care and attention as when I had been there. It would have been nice to have spent my day-off with them occasionally. We could have had a laugh at the times we spent in Flamborough Head. Joan, I heard from a friend, had softened and was impressed with the direction I had taken in life. It had to be soon a time for reconciliation. She must have concluded that everyone moves on eventually. I was no longer a charge on her shoulders.

  It was conceivable that the responsibility of taking me out of Dad’s way had been a burden for her too, for she had three children as well as a difficult husband, adding Susan, my younger sister, to the load as well for a time. Whatever the issues, I was content to allow time to do its bit and wait for a home-coming one day. Dad, though, had not changed his way of life, at all He was spending most of his time and most of his earnings on booze and tobacco. It must have been killing him, if slowly, but there was absolutely no-one who could make him see reason and tell him to ease off and have some sort of treatment.

  *

  The Prison Authorities decided, in their wisdom, as the prison population continued to swell, which was a source of constant irritation to the Government, let alone the planning nightmare for us, that some alleviation could be achieved by moving all the women and babies out of Exeter prison and convert the whole place to male accommodation. To put this into action I was sent down to Exeter to collect twelve mothers and their offspring together with the enormous amount of kit which accompanies babies. (Just as Caesar’s baggage trains took a day to pass a point). The Exeter Governor wanted a clean sweep and saw no reason to hold onto anything connected with children. The accumulated junk of decades, that only a unit such as mothers and babies can collect such as push chairs, cots, clothing, pots in various stages of decay and filth were piled into our vans instead of just dropping it into skips in Exeter. It would have been better if we had refused the piles of rubbish for there were many good organisations only too happy to help us start again in re-supplying the nursery. The women might be rogues, criminals or purely evil but they had some completely innocent children with them in their dormitories. It was part of our job to see they had as good a life as possible that we could arrange. The taint, ‘I was brought up in a prison, (remember Javerre’s speech in Les Miserables?), is a difficult one to remove.

  No-one liked change from the routine, ground in month after month until it became automatic, and the arriving mothers and babies caused the familiar wave of unrest. Eventually, after some spats, the ripples subsided and everyone got back on with their lives.

  By the very nature of the job, prison officers are shut away from the real world on the other side of the walls and fences but it did not stop the impact of the country’s general malaise of holding strikes. During my time at Styal, the Prison Officer’s Association became over-active in its disputes against what they perceived to be an uncaring Government. These actions escalated enormously throughout the Seventies. They became militant. Power was recognised; they began to flex their muscles. The claims made were of overcrowding in cells (which had led to ‘threeing up). Abolishing the death penalty meant prisoners would now be on long term tariffs meaning turn-over was slowed. Pay did not keep pace with inflation which was at a ludicrously high twenty percent, nor were reasonable requests for conditions to improve for staff who had to work in one of the most dangerous jobs in the country.

  Disputes rose in number and temper. Surprisingly though, the first national strike of the P.O.A. was not until two thousand and seven, well after I retired, though I hold no claims the reason was to do with me being in the Service! I could see both sides of the argument. I was not married and my expenses were a fraction of those officers who had a wife and children to keep, but strikes disrupted the even tenor of prison life and it belittled us in front of the prisoners who could jeer at the exploits of their guards. I also go back to my earlier comments. This is an incredibly hard job to hold down; there is little respite as one is locked down with criminals all day or night. There is little colour in the job – it is formed of greys and blacks, often of an abandonment of hope by the people one is charged to look after, so, go easy on the men and women of the Service. If not, come and try it yourself for a day, as I did. It is the second day when it becomes difficult.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  GRISLEY RISLEY

  I never did find out when my father first
contracted Motor Neurone disease. It was not something I knew much about. It is a progressive disease which attacks the motor neurons, or nerves, in the brain and spinal cord. As if it is a mouse, nibbling away at a lump of cheese, ultimately there is little left and the messages to the muscles become moribund and eventually come to a stop. The sufferer finds his body becoming weaker and can feel the muscles shrivelling up and casting off from the body, leaving one dangerously isolated and unstable. It is progressive. It can affect a patient in how he or she talks as well; also, drinking and finally breathing are affected. There is, currently, no cure.

  It was with this brief information, I went to see Dad several times in hospital having been told he was ill, if not what was wrong with him. He had been placed in an annexe of Worsborough hospital for the past six weeks, a place set aside especially for long-term patients, having been moved out of his awful house on a dreadful estate. It was difficult to get over to see him for I had had a recent hysterectomy, which meant I was not allowed to drive, so I had to resort to kind friends who found the time to take me over on my day off. It was Gilbert, the caring member of the family who had arranged for father to leave his shoddy estate bungalow in Kendray, supplying him with pyjamas and sweaters. I slipped in when others were not there, in considerable pain myself as the operation had not been a success. It remained like that for four years until, returning to a new job back in Styal, my old doctor sourced the problem and quickly corrected the issue.

  During my first visit, I had no idea any of these arrangements had been put in place and had not been told the degree of seriousness to which Dad had arrived, nor even that he had left his house. It was so typical of our family that communications with anyone else was at a zero. Nonetheless, I was able to brighten his day with a bottle of whisky, which, I felt, he might as well enjoy.

  On the last visit, I found him sitting in a chair in his room in what appeared to be new, or relatively new clothes. Dad had rallied as so often with dying people, some inner last strength to make a point and he was quite bright. But, he began to complain as soon as I entered the room.

  ‘They are always smoking. The lads that is, behind the nurses back. And they get so angry with me. I’m supposed to stop me mates from smoking. Might as well tell them to find me a pink piece of coal. The nurses are getting at me as a result, so I want you to tell me mates not to come again. Can you tell them for me?’

  ‘I don’t have a pink piece of coal Dad.’ He smiled grimly with understanding. I was, for the first time in my life, in control of my father. He was a beaten man.

  He grunted, then sniffed. ‘Listen,’ he was going on. ‘I know I’ve not done right by you and some of the others…. with anyone for that matter.’ He was tiring fast. ‘I want to change my Will. I need you to get another of those blank Will forms for me…so you can benefit.’ He looked up, believing he had said the right thing to me. ‘Things went wrong…since your mother died,’ he added. ‘I want you to get something.’

  I let the wall clock second hand sweep downhill and did not reply until it was climbing up the other side. ‘No. You can’t do that Dad. Whatever would the rest of the family think, knowing I have been coming here and then you go and change your Will to benefit me. Life would not be worth living with them. Besides, I’m doing well, better than the others. I don’t need it.’

  Dad looked round at me and studied my face, not something he had done when he had been a fit man. I think he was seeing something in me for the first time in his life. His face cleared eventually and he nodded his head in a tired but resolved way. After all, it was him and him alone who had created this dysfunctional family; it had not been my mother. His mind was now clear, made up.

  His hand dropped to the arm of the chair. ‘You’re right. Doesn’t seem proper, though.’ I had never heard him speak like that before. He was exhausted, I could see, both physically and mentally. The fight had gone out of him.

  I thought of all those years of pain, the dread, the sadistic attacks on all of us, the sheer bloody-mindedness of his attitude to life. Above all, there was his complete detachment from fatherhood, of providing a loving household. I was silent. It’s too late father, I said to myself. He could not put right the thirty-nine years of wrongs and I had no intention of exacerbating the family mood by Dad changing his Will in my favour. Nor did I ever see the Will, nor learn of its contents, nor did I want to. It didn’t matter. I was free.

  My father died the next day. Gordon organised the whole funeral, for he alone knew everything about the man who linked our family together for all the wrong reasons. There had been no family pow-wow on what Dad might have wanted for himself and he had told no-one where he had wanted to be buried. The funeral was very low-key, just the family and four or five other friends. There was a certain irony burying him with my mother as was decided, which was achieved after he had been pulled past the Stairfoot Working Men’s Club where he had been drinking in the final years of his life. His ashes were interred ensuring he left this world without having marked it in any way with the exception of the indelible scars lacerating his family’s memories.

  Was anyone upset at his passing at the funeral? Perhaps. Guilt? Yes. Could we have stopped Dad becoming the laughing stock as he stumbled down Doncaster Road – probably not? With the funeral over, we all melted away across Yorkshire and, as water covers the sand at high tide leaving no further marks Dad shuffled off his mortal coil. The chance to come together as a family unit for the first time was lost. Gone.

  *

  Father died in my fourth year when I was Chief Officer at Risley prison, which encompassed Birmingham Female Unit. I had known it in 1968 when I was a trainee and not much had changed in the ten intervening years. It is about twenty-three miles due east of Liverpool and was known in the circles as Grisley-Risley, a reputation which was well earned. It was built as a Remand Centre for both male and female inmates with several wings each with a specific purpose. But, as time progressed, conditions for women were found to be deteriorating badly. The prison had been built for 83 women and while I was there, circumstances meant we increased to two hundred women prisoners. It was bursting to the seams. This, inevitably sent out anxious waves from me to Headquarters and we received a visit from the Director General of Prisons who made a trip up from London. On his arrival, he shook me by the hand.

  ‘I often wondered how you have progressed since I last saw you,’ for we had known each other years earlier. I explained the reasons behind the serious overcrowding and the lack of facilities. He threw his eyes heavenward, an action he must have done many times before as he tried to stem the flow of funding requests from one prison Governor or another.

  ‘I know all this,’ he said but promised to look into it.

  There was a growing belief in me that I needed to find new ways of giving chances to the women which they had never had in their lives outside the prison walls. I wanted to find a solution to their eternal calls of ‘…no ma’am we don’t want to do no learning.’ The experiences of many at school had been bad, or non-existent in some cases, and anything to do with education was deemed to be degrading. Yet, they needed to have jobs when they left here or they would find themselves back inside within months. I learnt quickly to hide any suggestion of tutoring, of learning, beneath carefully couched phrases such as, ‘…let’s have a cooking session.’ Slowly, the women in my charge began to understand it could be fun to cook, with the added bonus as they realised that on getting out they had a much better chance of having gainful employment as a chef or a cook. We spread this to other types of work. A woman with computer skills could earn considerable amounts of money and could be a major contributor to the household funds. And above all, there was their self-esteem. Remove any suggestion of ‘learning’ and my inmates wanted to learn. Confidence in themselves rose dramatically.

  This was all a far cry from my arrival where I had been shown the punishment block housed in the strangely named Rule 43 wing which was on the ground floor. Mayhem abounded
, screaming as only women can scream, and at the top of their voices, shouting out abuse so that one Anglo-Saxon word was strung to the next, Doors were constantly banged with whatever object they could get hold of – it was appalling, and very sad. Into the air rose the aroma of warm urine, tobacco smoke and B.O. in equal parts. This was arising from the sub-human practice of slopping out into the sluices, having inhaled the stench in their cells from eight in the evening to seven in the morning.

  There were two punishment cells, each containing only one prisoner. These were cells within cells to reduce the level of noise which could rise to the landing above. Some of these screams would start at the entry of one or more cockroaches invading a woman’s space and on one occasion a prisoner, terrified of the insects went berserk. That time, the prison officer opened the doors and scooped up the roaches and lined them up suggesting she might like to bet on the winner. This was not the way to form any relationship with the occupant of the cell and her eventual reduction in tariff. The landing above was quieter, for the cells were kept open all day which allowed sweeter, fresh air to flow through the space. It reduced the complaints from these women not in punishment.

  As I have described earlier I have never had a warm relationship with rats, mice or cockroaches. Spiders could be added to the list with ease, so the day a mouse popped out of the wall into my jacket sleeve was a day to be mentioned in my diary. I had been interviewing a particularly dangerous prisoner, necessitating being surrounded by prison officers, well-trained, strong staff members there to see I got up to no mischief. The mouse had by this time decided it liked my pocket and I was concerned it might now make a meal of the lining. My colleagues had taken on board what had happened and were updated by me through much grinding of my teeth and a voice fit for the film Ice cold in Alex. (when the team were attempting to haul the ambulance up a sand dune). Some officers eventually exited with the prisoner, the rest, out of sight of any witnesses, sought out coats and gloves – gloves for god’s sake – being the toughest staff in my team, and proceeded to work through my clothes in a manner which could be described as ‘gingerly but frantic’. De-moused, I shook like a leaf, recovered, and dismissed my staff promising myself I must learn how to control such events. There were many mice and many cockroaches and all seemed centred on my office. And, I had to remind myself, I was now a Chief Officer.