a free enterprise merchant like myself could grumble about. However, Paul feels the money would have been better spent on inmates’ education and putting electricity into the cells. I have no idea if these figures are accurate, but Tony confirms that he checked them in Sir David Ramsbotham’s (head of the prison service) annual review.
When the meeting breaks up, Derek Del Boy Bicknell (murder) – interesting that he has not been invited to join the committee meeting – asks if he could have a private word with me. ‘I’ve got something for you to read,’ he says. I walk across the ground floor from Cell 9 to Cell 6. After he’s offered me a selection of paperbacks, I discover the real reason he wishes to see me.
He wants to discuss his appeal, and produces a letter from his solicitor. The main grounds for his appeal appear to be that his former solicitor advised him not to go into the witness box when he wanted to. He subsequently sacked the solicitor and his QC. He has since appointed a new legal team to advise him, but he’s not yet chosen a QC. Imagine my surprise when I discover one of his grounds for appeal is that he is unable to read or write, and therefore never properly understood what his rights were. I look up at a shelf full of books above his bed.
‘You can’t read?’
‘No, but don’t tell anyone. You see, I’ve never really needed to as a car salesman.’
This is a prisoner who carries a great deal of responsibility on the spur. He’s a Listener and number one on the hotplate. I earlier described him as a man who could run a private company and I have not changed my mind. Del Boy brings to mind Somerset Maugham’s moving short story, ‘The Bell Ringer’. However, it’s still going to be a disadvantage for him not to be able to study his legal papers. I begin to wonder how many other prisoners fall into the same category, and worse, just won’t admit it. I go over the grounds of appeal with Del Boy line by line. He listens intently, but can’t make any notes.
8.45 pm
Lock-up is called so I return to my cell to face – delighted to face – another pile of letters left on my bed by Ray the censor. I realize the stack will be even greater tomorrow when the papers inform their readers that I will not be going to an open prison, after Emma Nicholson has dropped her ‘I was only doing my duty’ barb into an already boiling cauldron.
I’ve now fallen into a routine, much as I had in the outside world. The big difference is that I have little or no control over when I can and cannot write, so I fit my hours round the prison timetable. Immediately after evening lock-up is designated for reading letters, break, followed by going over my manuscript, break, reading the book of the week, break, undress, go to bed, break, try to ignore the inevitable rap music. Impossible.
Every time I finish the day’s script, I wonder if there will be anything new to say tomorrow. However, I’m still on such a steep learning curve, I’ve nowhere near reached that dizzy height. But I confess I now want to leave Belmarsh for pastures new, and pastures is the key word. I long to walk in green fields and taste fresh air.
Billy (lifer, writer, scholar) tells me it will be better once I’ve settled somewhere, and don’t have to spend my energy wondering when and where I will be for the rest of my sentence. He’s been at Belmarsh for two years and seven months, and still doesn’t know where he’s destined for. Tony (marijuana only, escaped from open prison) warns me that, wherever I go, I’ll be quickly bored if I don’t have a project to work on. Thankfully, writing these diaries has solved that problem. But for how long?
Day 14 Wednesday 1 August 2001
6.21 am
A long, hot, sleepless night. The rap music went on until about four in the morning, so I was only able to doze off for the odd few minutes. When it finally ceased, a row broke out between someone called Mitchell, who I think was in the cell above the music, and another prisoner called Vaz, who owned the stereo below. It didn’t take long to learn what Mitchell planned to do to Vaz just as soon as his cell door was opened. Their language bore a faint resemblance to the dialogue in a Martin Amis novel, but without any of his style or panache.
8.37 am
Breakfast. Among my canteen selections is a packet of cereal called Variety, eight different cereals in little boxes. I start off with something called Coco Pops. Not bad, but it’s still almost impossible to beat good old Kellogg’s Cornflakes.
9.31 am
The morning papers are delivered to the duty officer. They’re full of stories confirming that my status has been changed from D-cat to C-cat because of Emma Nicholson’s accusations.
9.50 am
Ms Labersham arrives and actually knocks politely on my cell door, as if I were capable of opening it. She unlocks ‘the iron barrier’ and tells me that she has come to escort me to my creative-writing class.
I’m taken to a smoke-filled waiting room with no chairs, just a table. Well, that’s one way of guaranteeing a standing ovation. Moments later a trickle of prisoners appear, each carrying his own plastic chair. Once the nine of them are settled, Ms Labersham reminds everyone that it’s a two-hour session. She suggests that I should speak for about an hour and then open it up for a general discussion.
I’ve never spoken for an hour in my life; it’s usually thirty minutes, forty at the most before I take questions. On this occasion I speak for just over forty minutes, explaining how I took up writing at the age of thirty-four after leaving Parliament, with debts of ?427,000 and facing bankruptcy. The last time I gave this speech was at a conference in Las Vegas as the principal guest of a US hotel group. They flew me over first class, gave me a suite of rooms and sent me home with a cheque for $50,000.
Today, I’m addressing nine Belmarsh inmates, and Ms Labersham has confirmed that my prison account will be credited with ?2 (a bottle of Highland Spring and a tube of toothpaste).
When I’ve finished my talk, I am surprised how lively the discussion is that follows. One of the prisoners, Michael (aged twenty-one, murder), wants to talk about becoming a song writer, a subject about which I know very little. I don’t feel I can tell him that a lyricist is as different to a novelist as a brain surgeon is from a gynaecologist. Michael wants me to read out his latest effort. It’s already forty verses in length. I offer you one:
Michael heard yesterday that the judge had given him a tariff of eighteen years.
‘At least it’s not telephone numbers,’ he says.
‘Telephone numbers?’
‘Nine hundred and ninety-nine years,’ he replies.
When I finish reading Michael’s work, the group discuss it, before Terry (burglary, former cell-mate) reads three pages of his novel, which he hopes to have finished by the time they release him in December.
The group spend some time debating the use of bad language in a novel. Does it tell you anything about the character the author is writing about? Does it distract from the narrative? They go on to discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of Terry’s story. They don’t pull any punches.
Tony (marijuana only) then tells the group that he is writing a textbook on quantum mechanics, which has been a hobby of his for many years. He explains that his efforts will add nothing to the genre – his word – but as a project it keeps him occupied for many hours.
The final rendering is one of Billy Little’s poems. It’s in a different class to anything we’ve heard up until then, and everyone in that room knows it.
Crash Bang Slam
Subject despised, committed wrong,
broken wounded, buffeted along,
concealed confined, isolated state,
parental tools, judicial hate.
Golden cuffs, silver chains,
