Guilty

by Jane Bidder

  ‘Your pad mate’s not in at the moment,’ said the officer. ‘You’ve got ten minutes here to sort out your stuff. Then there’s induction at the centre. Don’t be late.’

  He almost was – it wasn’t easy to find his way round this place. But he got there just in time to find himself in a room full of about fifteen other men, some looking as though they couldn’t care less (like Spencer) and others who seemed like scared young boys. Simon listened carefully to the officer – a woman whose cheaply dyed blonde hair was tied back in a pony tail – as she barked out a list of do’s and don’ts along with rules about lock up which was apparently at 9 p.m. He hadn’t been to bed at that time since he’d been at prep school.

  ‘If you leave the prison without permission, you’ll be shipped out,’ added the officer sharply.

  ‘So why don’t they have a gate at the end of the drive to stop you escaping,’ he whispered to Spencer.

  ‘That’s the whole point, mate,’ he hissed back. ‘They want to teach us responsibility, like. ’Course, it’s different for the Dark Side. They’ve got double doors and wire and Christ knows what …’

  ‘Quiet at the back,’ roared the officer.

  Then there was the information on Canteen, which wasn’t an actual place like you might assume. Just a form that you filled in on Wednesday, circling items that you wanted like razors, deodorant, newspapers, or most importantly, a pin number so you could use one of the phones. Orders arrived the following Monday. So if you arrived at prison after a Wednesday, you had to wait until the next one to fill in your order. That meant he couldn’t ring Claire for ages. Simon wanted to hit his head against the wall of this sodding place. She’d be out of her mind by then. So would he.

  Then the officer assigned each of them to what she called a ‘work party’. Each prisoner had to belong to one. There was ‘farms and gardens’ which meant digging the garden beds (Simon had only done the lawn at home as Claire was the plants expert); or ‘works’ which was best suited for people who had electrical qualifications; or the kitchen, where you helped make meals for the rest of the prison; or ‘full-time education’ which you could only do when you’d been Inside for a certain number of weeks, depending on your sentence.

  You didn’t get a choice. His work party was ‘Stores’, the one Spencer had warned him about.

  Then on to the dining room because it was roll-call and if they weren’t there on time to be checked, they’d get a strike against their name and a loss of privileges. Back past the library Portakabin which had a ‘Closed’ sign; the laundry room which emitted a rather cosy washing smell; another Portakabin where he could see a row of computers (you could do various IT courses); the ‘shrink’ building where you could get counselling to get you off drinks and drugs; and the Centre where staff signed in and out and where inmates were ‘strictly forbidden’. There was also a chapel, he’d heard, and a Multi-Faith Room. It was like a small village.

  Dazed, Simon made his way back to G Hut, getting lost a few times along the way. Some huts, he noticed, had tubs of flowers by the entrance where someone had tried to make an effort. But not his. He went in cautiously, aware of a nasty smell from the communal bathroom where the door was wide open. There was the drone of a television from someone’s room as he went by and another man’s door was open, showing a line of shirts hanging from the curtain pole.

  Bloody hell! His own pad door was open. His heart beating, Simon went in. A thin, wiry man was lying on his bed, listening to music so loud that Simon’s ears hurt. He nodded at Simon.

  ‘Wotcha! I’m Kevin. Like this stuff?’

  ‘A bit loud, don’t you think?’ ventured Simon.

  Kevin grinned. ‘Tough.’

  That night, Simon tossed and turned under the thin, grey blanket as Kevin played his music until 3 a.m. without anyone coming round to tell him to turn it down. For Christ’s sake! He was a grown man. Not some teenager who stayed up all night. But the worst thing was not having Claire next to him. A cold feeling crawled through him. Supposing she had given up on him?

  It was days until the pin number for the phone came through from his Canteen order. Then he had to queue up for twenty minutes because there was only one phone in the hut. That was when she blew him out as Spencer might have put it.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. I can’t talk. Something’s happened. I’ll ring you back.’

  Why didn’t she want to talk? What had happened? Simon felt as though his body was going to explode. Unable to stop himself, Simon slammed the phone against the wall.

  ‘Watch it, mate. I need to use that.’ A big burly man distinguished by a shiny hairless head and a red and blue flame tattoo running down his right arm, now pushed past him to get into the booth. Then he shot him a slightly more sympathetic look. ‘Your missus giving you a hard time then? Don’t take it to heart, mate. They get like that sometimes. Listen. You couldn’t do me a favour, could you, and read these numbers on the phone card? Me glasses have broken and I’ve got to get hold of the wife ʼcos she hasn’t been able to pay the bleeding rent.’

  In the few days that Simon had been at HMP Freetown, he’d come across several pleas for reading help. The excuses were endless. Simon had read about prisoners and their literary failings but hadn’t taken much notice to date. He’d also read something about family breakdown in prison but that hadn’t meant much to him either. Until now.

  Why hadn’t Claire talked to him, wondered Simon as he walked back to his pad. What could possibly be so important that she hadn’t stopped and spoken to her husband who was in prison; not some hotel where she could call back? It wasn’t even as if Claire had written. Every morning, like everyone else, he waited in the queue by the window on the other side of which sat a prison officer who doled out letters in turn. And every morning he gave out his name and number – 121155A – only to be met with the same short word. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Who would want to stay married to a murderer?’ tinkled Joanna.

  ‘All right! I get the point!’

  ‘Get the point? What yer on about, your lordship?’

  He hadn’t known that he was talking about loud until his pad mate’s voice hit him. Kevin, the thin wiry beady-eyed man who insisted on calling him ‘Your lordship’ on account of his ‘posh’ voice, was already back from the phone and tucking into his Pot Noodles. Out of the £9 a week that they were given for jobs round the prison, many of the men spent theirs on dried food which were a staple item on the canteen list.

  It was also possible to order a daily newspaper but the cost of The Times, which he had never considered until now, would have eaten up his week’s allowance.

  ‘You was quick on the phone, then?’ Kevin was talking with his mouth full, revealing small yellow bits of processed corn which had got stuck in his teeth.

  Simon nodded curtly, not trusting himself to say anything. Already he could feel tears welling up in his eyes.

  ‘No need to be fucking off, your lordship.’ Kevin scowled at him. ‘’Snot my fault if you’ve got domestics.’ He turned his back and proceeded to blast out Bob Marley from the huge ghetto blaster on his side of the pad.

  ‘Isn’t there some rule against playing music too late?’ Simon had already asked one of the prison officers who patrolled each block of huts to check the men hadn’t brought in one too many possessions. (They were each allowed a total of twenty, which didn’t include clothes.)

  ‘You can file a complaint if you want.’ The officer, a young man sporting a gelled-back crest of a fringe, had sounded vaguely sympathetic. ‘But you might not be very popular with your cell-mate.’

  Simon soon wished he hadn’t said anything because someone must had overheard him talking to the officer and told Kevin. ‘’Ear you don’t like my taste in music, your lordship. Well too fucking bad.’ After that, Bob Marley not only got louder but also later. He couldn’t even rely on his neighbours complaining because their music was loud too.

  Now Simon sat on the edge of his bed on the far wall to Kev
in’s, his head in his hands. There was a funny smell indicating that his pad mate was smoking something he shouldn’t. He could report him for this but if he did, he knew what the consequences would be. The other day, someone had appeared in the breakfast queue with a bruised right eye claiming that he had fallen in the shower. The fact that he shared his pad with a renowned drugs dealer who had been shipped out after he’d split on him, was no coincidence.

  ‘By the way,’ trilled Joanna suddenly. ‘Seen what your friend is reading?’

  He turned round. Kevin was sitting at the top of his bed in his black boxers, smoking his roll-up and leafing through a magazine which had a picture of a woman sitting, her legs splayed open. ‘Want a deck?’ he offered, catching Simon’s eye.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘No thanks,’ mimicked Kevin in what he considered to be a public school accent.

  Simon stood up. The smell of the cigarette and the picture of that woman coupled with the disappointment of the phone call, made him need the loo. He tried not to go; it was easier than wading in through the pool of urine and faeces smeared on the seat. But sometimes you just had to.

  He’d wanted to tell Claire some of this as well of course as finding out how she was. But maybe, he thought as he queued up for one of two lockable loos in a hut for twenty men, it was just as well that he hadn’t talked to her that night after all.

  It wouldn’t be fair on her to know what hell it was in here. He’d brought this on himself. And he’d have to sort it out himself.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When he queued up again to phone Claire, it went straight through to answerphone both on her mobile, the landline, and also Ben’s mobile. What was happening, he asked himself during another restless night on a two-foot-six-wide bed and its pillow that could have doubled up as a slab of concrete.

  He must have dozed off briefly because he woke as the morning tannoy voice blared through the loudspeaker in the corridor outside. Quick! The bathroom! Already, Simon knew that if you weren’t head of the queue, you would be met with the usual pile of faeces.

  Easing himself out of bed – the narrowness had done something to his back – he grabbed his regulation towel which was hanging by a tape from the back of the door and his wash bag. Too late. An enormous man pushed past him wearing nothing but a tight pair of Union Jack boxers, slamming one of two lockable loo doors behind him. The other door was jammed.

  The man in the tight Union Jack boxers was taking his time. In fact, he seemed to be speaking to someone. Simon could hear the low hurried murmurs before realising that the man must somehow have got hold of a mobile phone which would be enough of a crime to get him shipped out immediately. Even worse, he, Simon might for all he knew, be held as an accessory if he didn’t say something. Yet if he did, as Spencer had told him, he’d be in ‘deep shit’.

  The urge to pass a motion was getting stronger. Frantically, Simon knocked on the other locked door. Behind him, the rest of the pad occupants in G huts were trooping in. ‘You won’t get Gary out of there,’ one of them said. ‘He’s having a wank.’

  He was really beginning to panic now. If he didn’t find a proper loo, he was going to …

  ‘Shit, mate,’ said the voice of his pad mate. ‘You’re not meant to do that kind of stuff in the urinals.’ He laughed. A nasty low throaty laugh. ‘Maybe you’re not so posh after all.’

  Simon stared in horror at the brown mess that had slid down onto the floor from between his legs. He wanted to cry just as he had cried when he had ‘had an accident’ as matron had put it when he’d first gone away to school. The smell was appalling. ‘I tried to hang on,’ Simon said, feeling like a nine year old.

  ‘Better clear it up, mate,’ said someone else. ‘It’s not nice for the rest of us, is it?’

  At that point, the tannoy started with its tinny, crackling high-pitched whine. ‘Roll-call. Roll-call.’

  There was a general groan and then en masse the bathroom evacuated. He had to get moving. Being late for roll-call at 7.45 a.m. on the dot meant one warning. Any more might mean that he wouldn’t be allowed a visit from Claire – if she wanted to see him still. Frantically, Simon scooped up the mess with some loo paper and then washed his hands raw in the basin. Pulling on his regulation green trousers and T-shirt, he legged it towards the dining room. A woman officer was standing at the head by the cold toast and bowls of porridge. She shot him an impassive look. ‘Number?’

  121155A. He knew it off by heart now just like he had known his boot number at school.

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry but …’

  The officer made a note on the pad in front of him. ‘You’ve got a strike.’

  He felt sick; unable to eat anything.

  ‘Two more and you’re in trouble!’ tinkled Joanna. ‘Better not be late for work, had you?’

  On his first day in Stores, Simon had taken over from an inmate who was about to go out to work and could hardly hide his glee. Work, he told Simon, usually meant sorting out bags in a charity shop or cleaning up a park or doing something ‘what helps others, like’. It was ‘fucking fantastic’ because you got to leave the camp in the white van every morning and do your stuff before coming back at 4 p.m. You even got to go out at lunch time and you could get lucky if you played your cards right.

  Simon thought of the times he had gone to the local charity shop to buy books and wondered if, without knowing, he’d been served by someone who was on day release from prison. It almost made him laugh and take his mind away from the job in front of him. He had, so his predecessor explained, to give out work uniform, depending on which work party the applicant was in. White for kitchens. Green for farms and gardens. And so on.

  Stores also provided a dull maroon tracksuit for prisoners who hadn’t brought in their own clothes or weren’t able for financial reasons to get family to send stuff in. (This led, he noticed, to some resentment from those who weren’t able to afford designer tracksuits.) There were also rules on what clothes you were and weren’t allowed to wear when you weren’t working. Overall black (top and bottoms) were forbidden although one or the other was acceptable. Hoodies were banned.

  ‘Watch out for the ones who say they’ve lost stuff but want something else, man.’ The departing inmate had grinned toothlessly at him. ‘Trainers are really hot. If you work with them, they might be able to help you get something you want, like. But don’t get caught or you won’t be able to go out to work.’

  The induction session had taught him that this was what he was working towards. A few months at Stores until he could get on to the lists for Education, which was currently full. Education was meant to be an option for everyone although it consisted mainly of classes building up towards levels one and two which were only GCSE. He had an MBA, for God’s sake. Then work, provided he was considered ‘eligible’. And then, maybe, Out.

  He didn’t want to think about that bit because if he did, he wouldn’t be able to cope with the months in between. ‘Two years is nothing, mate,’ someone had said to him in the dinner queue the other week. ‘I’ve had three years in this place. Another three months and I’m away.’

  The man in question was going to work on a building site, driving himself in his own car. Simon had been amazed when he’d first discovered this but it was apparently the way it worked. Depending on the length of your sentence and your behaviour, you were allowed to go out to work providing you returned by 5 p.m. when you were searched to make sure you hadn’t brought back drugs with you. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t easy to find a job. Many employers were reluctant to employ men still doing time. The best bets were building sites and bars.

  How had it been that he had lived his life as a so-called defence lawyer without understanding what it was really like after sentence had been passed?

  Now, he headed for the low hut near the dining room with the corrugated roof and the word ‘Stores’ scrawled in black paint on the door. With any luck, there would be time to
call Claire after work and before roll-call at lunch. Meanwhile, there was a queue already forming and a short stout Liverpudlian whom he recognised from F hut which was next to his, gave him a sharp look. ‘Where’ve you been, man? I’ve had to deal with this lot on my own. Get a move on, can you.’

  Simon slid under the counter to face his first customer of the day: a tall thin white boy who didn’t seem much older than Ben. He spoke in a quiet educated voice. That was another thing about this place. You got all sorts. There were a handful of other professionals like him; there were the sharp ones who had more savvy than educational skills. And there were some who had seemed to slip through the school net completely and could barely string a sentence together.

  On the whole, the men went round camp on their own, although there were certain clusters who would hang together. This could be intimidating and Simon found himself feeling scared when he walked past, taking care not to make eye contact in case one of them took it as provocation.

  Why was he so scared? Simon asked himself. It wasn’t as though he wasn’t used to being in the company of criminals. Yet there was something very different about being in a position of authority to being ‘one of them’. Most of these men were perfectly capable of hurting him.

  ‘But you hurt me,’ protested Joanna indignantly in his head.

  ‘Yes but that was unintentional.’

  She sniffed. ‘The result was the same as if you had taken a sledgehammer to me.’

  Simon began to shake. ‘Don’t.’

  The boy in front of him was taking care not to look him. ‘I’ve lost me trainers,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Poor diddums,’ snorted someone behind him. Even though he was wearing a white T-shirt, a thick gold chain round his neck, and loose camouflage trousers, Simon recognised him as the man in the tight Union Jack boxers and the mobile phone.

  ‘You’re going to have to fill a form in,’ he said, turning back to the tall, thin white-faced boy. ‘It’s got to be agreed by one of the officers before I can do anything. I suggest you come back tomorrow.’